Mark McDougall wrote:
Silicon Sam wrote:From my service days, I still have a pile of new keyswitches left. Odd ones like the Caps Lock keyswitch for //e, /// and //c. Even a bunch for that horrendous //c keyboard with the spring on the top part of the keyswitch. Pretty much most of the style of keyswitches what Apple offered, even some of the oddball ones they used on the //e. Someday I'll put a list together with pics.I was pretty impressed with the quality of the switches on the Apple //e that I have. The units are completely sealed, so it's not going to fail from dirty contacts. And the mechanical arrangement meant that it was never going to fail purely from abuse (smashing the keys) either. I'm surprised it failed at all, and I suspect it was ultimately fatigue from a *lot* of key presses.
A sealed keyswitch is not much help, since the most common kind of "dirt" is oxidation of the contacts resulting from long disuse. Hermetic sealing could do the job, but is unlikely in any consumer keyboard. The good news is that a small squirt of contact cleaner and vigorous exercising of the faulty switch will usually clean it up. -michael 8-voice music synthesizer using NadaNet networking! Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/