Fleysher.wbst@Xerox.COM (Dan Fleysher) (01/12/87)
Thanks for your input, those of you who responded. My "O" key now works fine - I squirted contact cleaner directly on the contacts. If any of you have old Atari 800's (circa 1979?) and need the following info for reassembling a key, read on; else delete. I pried off the key cap, to expose the contacts, but the square plunger that holds the key cap and spring popped out like a jack in the box - it wasn't supposed to! The plunger is hollow and fits over the contacts which stick up from below. The contacts normally press together - a little horizontal plastic bar inside the plunger holds them apart until the key (and plunger) are depressed. If I had merely pushed the plunger back into place the little bar would have mashed the contacts. If a plunger pops out on you, you need a tool to hold the contacts apart so that the plunger bar can be safely pushed back down between the contacts. To make such a tool, I squeezed a plastic drinking straw into an oval cross section and cut off the sides of the oval for a length of 2 inches. That resulted in a pair of 2 inch parallel plastic tabs attached to the rest of the straw. I inserted the tabs thru the plunger (on either side of the bar), and down between the contacts to hold them apart while the plunger was re-inserted. Thank goodness it worked. Sorry if this isn't clear. A picture would probably be worth a thousand words... Dan ----------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------