[Info-vax] Restoring LK451 keyboard

[Galen]

This keyboard cost almost nothing and came with a decent looking body and good key caps.

A soda spill (evidently) some years ago had destroyed some of the metal traces in the plastic sheet sandwich that “wires” the Jews to the tan Oder board. I fixed that with conductive tape.

It had probably had something a little heavy sitting on top of the left hand side, too, as some of the rubber domes (which act as springs below the key caps) have been crushed flat. And this was not simple wear—several them are seldom used, like the ESC key.

I have had three ways in mind of restoring the keyboard to usable condition. (Buying one in working order is also an option, but that’s the easy way out.)

1. Find a replacement for the rubber sheet with the domes on it.
2. Try to reinforce the collapsed domes somehow. (Tricky)
3. Cut out the crushed domes and enough of the good domes from useless (to me) keys like F1-F4 etc. to take their place. (Cementing them in place of the removed ones would be tricky.)

#1 is unlikely unless I can find someone with a keyboard they will part with; with keys that work but that isn’t being used, or is electrically/electronically dead. Do I see any hands? 😁 

I’m also interested in hearing from any who have managed to fix this sort of this problem, and how they went about it.