rac@sherpa.UUCP (Roger Cornelius) (08/23/90)
A friend has a 130XE with a flakey keyboard. The symptoms are: Anywhere from 5 - 15 minutes after powering on, the keyboard stops working, but not completely. You just have to press very hard to get the keys to register. Powering off then back on has no effect if the power-on is immediate. The unit must remain off for awhile to have any effact. This sounds sorta like a heat problem and sorta like a mechanical problem. Does anyone have any suggestions for him. Thanks. -- Roger A. Cornelius rac@sherpa.UUCP uunet!sherpa!rac
DAVISM@kcgl1.eng.ohio-state.edu (Michael T. Davis) (08/23/90)
In article <306@sherpa.UUCP>, rac@sherpa.UUCP (Roger Cornelius) writes: >A friend has a 130XE with a flakey keyboard. The symptoms are: > >Anywhere from 5 - 15 minutes after powering on, the keyboard stops >working, but not completely. You just have to press very hard to get >the keys to register. > >Powering off then back on has no effect if the power-on is immediate. >The unit must remain off for awhile to have any effact. > >This sounds sorta like a heat problem and sorta like a mechanical >problem. Does anyone have any suggestions for him. > It sounds like you are slowly frying your keyboard. When I had my 130XE, I too went crazy trying to figure out what was wrong. First step... open your computer (warranty -- we don't need no stinking warranty ;-). Care- fully pull the "ribbon" from the keyboard connection on the motherboard. Clean the runs with a soft cloth (e.g. paper towel) with a solution of mild soap and water. (I used Ivory dish washing liquid.) Rinse the runs and dry them. Now find R95 on the motherboard (somewhere near the keyboard connector). In some models, Atari in its infinite wisdom (yeah, right :-) chose to use a resistor of smaller value than really required. Thus more current gets through than should normally be allowed through runs of conductive paint. Unfortunately, I don't remember the value of the resistor I used to replace R95. Try 1K and see what happens. You want something at least twice the resistance of the existing resistor (220 Ohms), but not so strong that you can no longer see the power LED. >Thanks. > Good luck, Mike >-- >Roger A. Cornelius rac@sherpa.UUCP uunet!sherpa!rac davism@kcgl1.eng.ohio-state.edu | These Thoughts, They Be Mine davis-m@eng.ohio-state.edu |
scott@tab29.larc.nasa.gov (Scott Yelich) (08/23/90)
>This sounds sorta like a heat problem and sorta like a mechanical >problem. Does anyone have any suggestions for him. One of my old XEs had this problem. (I guess it just comes from normal use.) I took my keyboard apart and cleaned the rubber key things (They look like the letter Y). I guess they get dusty. Again, I don't know why the keys would work sometimes and not other times... but I had the same symptoms and what I just explained fixed MY problem keyboard. I also had a problem with the little plastic sheet with the current lines on it eventually cracking in certain places. I didn't want to solder the thing because I was afraid the heat would actually MELT AWAY more of the plastic. I eventually just cut a paperclip (small paperclip) to get about a 1/4" section and then I just stuck that on top of where the gap was. I guess any open wire would work. My main problem was blowing the PIA chip by getting sloppy while making gadgets hardware devices to plug into the joystick ports. It's amazing what nifty things you think of when you have 8 8bit computers... most with 4 joystick ports! -- Signature follows. [Skip now] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Scott D. Yelich scott@[xanth.]cs.odu.edu [128.82.8.1] After he pushed me off the cliff, he asked me, as I fell, ``Why'd you jump?'' Administrator of: Game-Design requests to <game-design-request@cs.odu.edu> ODU/UNIX/BSD/X/C/ROOT/XANTH/CS/VSVN/ -----------------------------------------------------------------------------