Laptops aren’t always the bomb/drool/mountain dew proof machines we wish they were. [TomTheGeek] was suffering from a loss of his I, 8 and K keys. Like a laptop Reaver, he sliced out the old keyboard and spliced in a compact USB keyboard. He likes the look, I’d probably whip up some acrylic spacers at the least and fill the exposed areas.
THIS IS MY CONTRIBUTION TO THE WORLD!
I always felt i was going to give some amazing information to the internet for the world to bask in and nows my time to shine:
Should you spill pop or whatever in your keyboard and they stop working its because the traces are shorted. To remedy this i took the entire keyboard apart, theres a few layers of traces. Wash each of those in hot soapy water and dry them off completely.. COMPLETELY. Let them dry till they is no a simple drip of moisture on them then put it all back together and it will work again perfectly. I have a logitech wireless keyboard that has stopped working many a time from little ‘whoopsies’ and its still chuggin along.
That is, if its just dirty…. Who knows right? try it and seeeeeee
Posted at 1:40 am on Jan 12th, 2007 by Crusty Justy
Good hack, tomthegeek. I see you are the guy who gave us the internal BT mod, too! Hey, there’s almost enough space at the sides of your keyboard to fit a numpad. Can you remove the sides of the keyboard to allow more room? Anybody know of a slimmer-keyed numpad add-on? Also, another alternative is to hardwire the KBD to one external USB port, then run one of the USB ports from your hub to the outside of the laptop. If you’re inventive, and you are, you could get it out the same hole in the case, and not have to cut a new one. Maybe just lift the USB+ and USB- traces, leaving the socket anchored to the motherboard.
Posted at 5:50 am on Jan 12th, 2007 by Pocketbrain
Nice hack. Shame about the BIOS though.
Judging by the picture, it looks like he can just slide the keyboard over to the right, leaving a nice amount of room left over – like for an Optimus mini-three or something.
Posted at 9:12 am on Jan 12th, 2007 by pragma
About crustyjusty’s post…
water + metal is never a good idea unless you are trying to oxidize the metal. rubbing alcohol is a better idea, and can even be used to rinse spilled water from a keyboard.
Posted at 9:24 am on Jan 12th, 2007 by craash420
Actually i never meant that you should put any metal in the water, just the keyboard traces (the see-through circuit looking things).
Posted at 11:42 am on Jan 12th, 2007 by Crusty Justy
Is that vista on that screen I see or just the Vista theme for XP? ;)
Posted at 1:02 pm on Jan 12th, 2007 by Scott
nice work that must bw the vista theme
Posted at 1:48 pm on Jan 12th, 2007 by james
Of course, you could always buy another keyboard from eBay, and have something that you’d actually want to show to people… Or maybe if the keyboard came out and you could use it at a 0-degree angle so as not to get RSS from it…
But the biggest drawback is that you still run Windows. For shame!
Posted at 2:59 pm on Jan 12th, 2007 by Alexander
he does know they sell laptop keys on ebay for a dollar, right?
Posted at 7:59 pm on Jan 12th, 2007 by Andross
nvm, didn’t rtfa
Posted at 8:19 pm on Jan 12th, 2007 by Andross
The past summer, 2006, staying at an apt that I was able to get the gomernment to pay for, After being able to stay away from meth for a few months, me and my roommate got in to it and I very soon found lots of people over at the house all the time taking shit apart. It was great! But at one point somebody gets pissed off and throws water at someone else and it got into the keyboard of the laptop that I just got fixed. Turns out that it erroded some of the tracks inside it, but I just used a big usb keyboard and set the laptop up as a desktop, it was fun!
Posted at 1:41 am on Jan 13th, 2007 by Mouse
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Don’t worry about those spaces… spilled mountain dew will mix with cookie crumbs to fill the space with a concrete-like substance.
Posted at 11:28 pm on Jan 11th, 2007 by morcheeba