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.
15 thoughts on “USB Keyboard Swap”
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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.
This kinda makes me wonder when my Gateway Solo 1100 will die out. Probably soon.
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
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.
Nice hack. is that Grim on the screen?
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.
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.
Actually i never meant that you should put any metal in the water, just the keyboard traces (the see-through circuit looking things).
Is that vista on that screen I see or just the Vista theme for XP? ;)
nice work that must bw the vista theme
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!
he does know they sell laptop keys on ebay for a dollar, right?
nvm, didn’t rtfa
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!
Help needed. M, N, D and Tab keys are wobbling like earth quake. I think I need to fix them properly or may be replace them. Whats best to do?