On Wed, 25 May 2022, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
Another question for the masters here. I just tried to revive my Model III. More than half the keys don't work anymore. What is the conventional wisdom on cleaning these old TRS-80 keyboards? Is compressed air usually enough? Can I spray the switches with something like DeOxit safely? I expect when I go to revive my Model I's they are likely to be in the same state.
A really stupid suggestion: (cleaning the key mechanisms makes more sense):
More than a quarter of a century ago, I revived several of my TRS-80's. None of the keys worked on one keyboard, and many of the keys didn't work on another. But, I noticed that repeatedly pressing an intermittent key made it work reliably, and repeatedly pressing a "dead" key got it working!
I had a Rochester Dynatyper and a KGS-80, which were the two most common versions of a box of solenoids to place on top of a typewriter to convert it into a printer. Those came out when there were no cheap printers. There also existed a box, made by an outfit in Walnut Creek, to put UNDER a Selectric that pulled down on the keys, but I neever had one of those, and that was ONLY for Selectric, whereas the Rochester Dynatyper and the KGS-80 worked on ANYTHING with a normal keyboard, even a Merganthaler! I remember once at the West Coast Computer Faire, somebody showed a prototype of one that used fishing line and pulleys to work the carriage return of a MANUAL (non-electric) typewriter - every successful carriage return got a round of applause.
I used the Dynatyper and the KGS-80 to "type" a few hundred pages. The TRS-80 keyboards came back to life! -- Grumpy Ol' Fred
