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Help restoring a Commodore XT keyboard

Posted: 08 May 2017, 22:02
by Half-Saint
I recently pulled a Commodore keyboard from the dumpster. Literally. It was buried under an old CRT monitor and some sort of a deep fryer. It looks like the one described here: http://www.classic-computers.org.nz/blo ... re-pc5.htm

Unfortunately, the cable has been cut and one of the key caps is missing (number 5 in the top row iirc). The switch is also missing half of the stem which went missing along with the cap :-)

I presume this is an XT keyboard and I took it because of Cherry MX switches and key caps. The caps are somewhat yellowed however.

Tracking down an equally yellowed cap is a job for Sisyphus so what else can I do? I'd like to fix this one and use it with my XT clone.

Cheers

Posted: 08 May 2017, 22:21
by Findecanor
According to the Wiki the cable seems to have a socket on the motherboard. You could probably convert it cleanly.

The keyboards with 1u keys on the top row of the numpad seem to use AT protocol instead. Not sure if that is always the case though.
I have one of the latter. I could use a multimeter to find which wire goes to which pin on the plug, but I am not sure if that would be applicable to the keyboard you have.

Posted: 12 May 2017, 16:35
by Mr.Nobody
Terry Steward from NZ...his youtube channel stopped updating long time ago.

Posted: 16 May 2017, 18:43
by Half-Saint
Err, yes, I actually linked to his site in the first thread ;)

Posted: 17 May 2017, 01:13
by scottc
Aw, I love these crazy reverse two-tone commodore boards. Which layout is yours in? There are some really unique caps on those. :) Did you manage to get everything you needed for this?

Posted: 17 May 2017, 07:55
by seebart
Half-Saint wrote: I presume this is an XT keyboard and I took it because of Cherry MX switches and key caps.
There are at least three versions of this; notice how the num-pad top row differs;
IMGP9345.JPG
IMGP9345.JPG (1014.33 KiB) Viewed 2658 times
The top one with the two ESC keys and speaks AT protocol while the bottom one is XT and in this case is the NMB version that is more uncommon than the Cherry version with MX blacks. All three versions are PCB mount but the cases are very sturdy, no flex. I'm never quite sure which one is PC-5 and PC-10.

photos-f62/cherry-g80-0530-commodore-pc ... =commodore

wiki/Commodore_PC-10_keyboard

wiki/Commodore_PC-5/PC-10_keyboard

I'll PM you if I find that keycap you need.

Posted: 17 May 2017, 16:22
by Half-Saint
Here's the one that I have in all it's dirty ugliness!

Posted: 17 May 2017, 16:30
by seebart
Yeah that's pretty beat up but as long as the PCB is OK it's not dead. Have you been able to test it?

Re: Help restoring a Commodore XT keyboard

Posted: 17 May 2017, 20:00
by Half-Saint
Not yet. Need to clean it up first.

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