Sorted by Squirrels.

Monday 14 September 2009

Mending

Finally I've had some movement towards finishing a job. Really, it's been a long time :)

A poorly Atom belonging to a friend required a key switch fix. The keyboard on Atom motherboards of issues 1..4 is a strange all-in-one affair where the switch mechanism is a pair of counter-wound springs which connect when a weedy plastic plunger depresses them. They are puny and prone to breaking.

The only effective fix is to cut out the broken part and insert a new switch, as I believe I have blogged about before. This would be a new challenge as the switches I replaced before were at the end of a row and were changed as a unit. This time I would attempt a single unit as I have run out of replacement parts to do the two adjacent switches...



This is the first time I've used my callipers and I must say they're jolly useful.



Here's the replacement switch ready to be dropped in. The antennae were added so that the tiny whisker-like wires at the base of the switch would register correctly with the holes on the PCB. The replacement part is ever-so-teensily different from the one it's replacing, so registration wasn't guaranteed when sliding the piece into the anxiously awaiting gap. When the sides of the switch were coated with superglue that would have been a problem. The extensions fell away as expected when the solder joints were applied.


Hurrah!

No comments:

Contact Form

Name

Email *

Message *

This is how we do it

MMC (9) acorn atom (7) zx81 (7) sord m5 (6) arduino (5) multicart (5) Sord (4) tatung einstein (4) Atari 800 (3) Chuckie egg (3) M5 (3) M5Multi (3) c128 (3) sd card (3) sd2iec (3) sio2sd (3) 6502 (2) Max6956 (2) QL (2) RCM (2) assembler (2) avr (2) c64 (2) cadsoft eagle (2) eeprom (2) einSDein (2) mmbeeb (2) multi-cart (2) spi (2) system 80 (2) ufat2 (2) vic20 (2) video genie (2) 6502 second processor (1) 6522 (1) 8255 (1) Acorn BBC Micro (1) Apple 2e (1) Apple ][ 2 two (1) BBC 6502 second processor (1) BBC micro (1) DevicePrint (1) Double Choc Chip Muffins (1) FAT (1) IO (1) Jupiter Ace (1) LED (1) Master 128 (1) PCB (1) PIC (1) POV (1) PROGMEM (1) Pineapple (1) ST (1) Spectrum 128 (1) antex (1) arcade spinner (1) arduino shield (1) atari (1) atmel (1) bakewell tart (1) beer (1) bird's nest (1) bitbucket (1) brokenated XC special (1) cake (1) cassette (1) cassette interface (1) colecovision (1) compact flash (1) convert (1) dac (1) de-yellowing (1) dev cart (1) eaca (1) efficient (1) einsdein. z80 (1) esp32 (1) esp8266 (1) eye strain (1) failosophy (1) filesystem (1) finally (1) fram (1) french polishing (1) fuse (1) fuses (1) games (1) gaming (1) github (1) glue (1) google chrome (1) heroic failure (1) high voltage programming (1) hot irons (1) if (1) jiffydos (1) joey beltram (1) lego robot (1) library (1) lying (1) machine code (1) matron (1) microcode (1) mmc interface (1) mmc2iec (1) mmm (1) mouse guts (1) oscilloscopes (1) pcm (1) pic32mx (1) porn (1) proto shield (1) purple (1) repo (1) retro computer museum (1) retro hard-on (1) rom box (1) sd (1) sd-x (1) sd2mmc (1) seadragon (1) silliness (1) small (1) software master (1) soldering (1) spi software master (1) stray capacitance (1) string (1) techadventure (1) test equipment porn (1) ts1000 (1) turtle cheesecake (1) tweaking (1) vc20 (1) video head (1) video ram replacement (1) weewee (1) wingasm (1) wire library (1) wodges of IO (1) xilinx cpld (1) yellowing (1) z80 (1) zx spectrum (1) zxpander (1)
Unless otherwise stated all of the original work presented here is:

Creative Commons License
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Generic License.

The work of others where referenced will be attributed appropriately. If I've failed to do this please let me know.