Amiga A1200 Keyboard CHEAP fix.

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Don't Panic. Please wash hands.
  • My Amiga 1200 keyboard had 12 - 15 keys pads that were failing. I found replacements keys on many websites and were $2 to $4 plus shipping, too much, $30 - $50 to fix my keyboard. Note these are old used pads and may fail in a short time.

    I found $5 to $12 to do all keypads many times. This will work on all conductive pads round or rectangle. The circuit membrane must be good, and all keys must work to some degree.

    You can check the pads with an ohm meter on 200-ohm range and must be 80 ohms or lower across the black conductive pad to be ok, use slight pressure not to damage the pad.

    Tools and parts.

    1 Small tweezers.

    2 Scissors

    3 Small roll of aluminum tape used on forced air duct systems. You can go to a business that does heating and AC and ask them for a 20 mm piece. It MUST be aluminum and have zero ohms across the foil.

    4 Caliper or a way to measure 7.5 mm x 2.5 mm.


    Wipe the circuit membrane with a paper towel to lightly clean the black conductive pads, do not rub.

    Cut the aluminum tape to the size above, use the tweezers to remove the paper from the aluminum tape and apply it to the bad keypad and press it down.

    Do this for all bad keys.

    On round keypads you may be able to use a paper punch, but small squares will work. :)

  • You wrote in an earlier post that you use a Windows machine - the simplest program there would be "Irfanview": Load the pic, resize to 1000 pixels on the X-axis (Y-axis proportional), save JPG with 65%, that should be in the "few hundred k" area. When saving, remove all other info (metadata), as that will just bloat the binary.

  • Jens

    The Buddha IDE board is working great no issues. Some drives the Buddha won't see so I need to use a pc to reset them to default then format them, then the buddha will see the drives and BuddhaHDToolBox will read the drive configuration correctly.

    Another tool that would be useful is a razor knife to separate the foil from the paper.

    Make sure the foil covers all of the black conductive pad.

  • That aluminium tape might be something that's more common in the US, as there are many households with A/C and service on them is way more common. In Euope (at least "Germany and more northern"), A/C in a private building is very uncommon, so the tools and parts to service them may be much harder to find. So a part number, vendor or alternative source of the aluminium tape would be an interesting thing.

  • Searching for "Aluband selbstklebend" on Amazon offers lots of results.

    Commodore: A1200/1B, ACA1234/50/68882, Indi AGA MK3, Gotek, OS3.2.1 | A1200/1D.1, ACA1221lc/26,67, OS3.1 | A500/6a, ACA500+, Indi ECS V3, OS3.1 | A500/8A, Vampire v2+, Indi ECS V2, A2048, Gotek, OS3.9| A500/5, 512kB Trap, sealed, Kick 1.2 | 2×C64C, U II+, Turbo Chameleon V2, 2×1541II, Datassette | 1084S-CRT ······· Atari: Falcon030 | 1040STE | 800XL

  • That aluminium tape might be something that's more common in the US, as there are many households with A/C and service on them is way more common. In Euope (at least "Germany and more northern"), A/C in a private building is very uncommon, so the tools and parts to service them may be much harder to find. So a part number, vendor or alternative source of the aluminium tape would be an interesting thing.

    I did it a couple of weeks ago with copper tape, some keys (spacebar, L, M, cursor keys, -) of my A500 keyboard did'nt work anymore.

    I bought a new hard membrame but it didn't help, same keys didn't work.

    I had here some copper tape and used it on the 'plunger' of the bad keys.

    Work's again like new, only one downside... when I play some pinball games... now with the working spacebar... TILT again :D

    Images

    A1200 Rev2B OS 3.2| SanDisk CF64GB | Blizzard 1230 IV 64MB FPU 68882/50 | Indivision AGA MK3 | CA-PSU | Eizo S1933 | Bose Companion 2 series III

    A500 Rev6A OS 3.2| SanDisk CF16GB | ACA500+ V2 / Blizzard 1230 IV 32MB | Indivision ECS V3 | ACE2b | CA-PSU | Eizo S1933 | Bose Companion 2 series III

    A1200 Rev2B OS3.2.2 | Black Edition | SanDisk MSD32GB | PistormLite32 | Indivision AGA MK3 | RTG Picaso96 1280x1024| CA-PSU | Eizo S1933

    iAmiga 27" | OS 3.2 FS-UAE | SDD 1 TB | RTG Picaso96 2560x1440

  • Jens

    Yes, copper tape is available over here as well, but it is more expensive and less flexible. I had some Aluminum tape on hand, and I used it. I believe that Copper corrodes more than Aluminum. What other options do Amiga users have to keep their machines working. Why don't you look into getting new conductive pads made, these can be replaced from the plastic keys with a pair of tweezers, but you must remove each key cap. There have been many Amiga users that replaced the key board membrane, and it did not solve the problem, wasted their money not knowing that the problem was the conductive pads. Try swapping the bad keys with known good ones and if they still don't work then it's the membrane. I repaired 18 keys with Aluminum tape and now I have a working 1200. Now I can install OS3.1 soon as I get my IDE2SD adapter so I can connect an external CD drive to it.

  • Interesting idea.

    I applied graphite paint from the spray can to the rubber pads with a fine brush. Works great. Cleaned beforehand with isopropanol.

    (Translated, excuse my english)

  • I tried that on my Amiga back in the late 90's and I found that the paint (resistive pen to make circuit board) used would crack because of the flexing of the pads, and the keys would become intermittent again and made a mess inside the keyboard, that is why I continued to use the foil that worked for me and will not make a mess. I dissected one pad using a microscope in me electronics class to see how it was made. I looked like it was impregnated with carbon or graphite. I even used an ink eraser to try to remove the dead layer, with no success. What brand of paint did you use? How long has the keys lasted? Are you from U.S.A. or Europe? I am willing to try anything if it works better and is cheap. Let me know.

    Thanks for your reply.

  • That aluminium tape might be something that's more common in the US, as there are many households with A/C and service on them is way more common. In Euope (at least "Germany and more northern"), A/C in a private building is very uncommon, so the tools and parts to service them may be much harder to find. So a part number, vendor or alternative source of the aluminium tape would be an interestingI thing.

    aluminum tape found a bunch on ebay.de and ebay.eu.

  • I tried that on my Amiga back in the late 90's and I found that the paint (resistive pen to make circuit board) used would crack because of the flexing of the pads, and the keys would become intermittent again and made a mess inside the keyboard, that is why I continued to use the foil that worked for me and will not make a mess. I dissected one pad using a microscope in me electronics class to see how it was made. I looked like it was impregnated with carbon or graphite. I even used an ink eraser to try to remove the dead layer, with no success. What brand of paint did you use? How long has the keys lasted? Are you from U.S.A. or Europe? I am willing to try anything if it works better and is cheap. Let me know.

    Thanks for your reply.

    I'm from Germany / Europe. I used "kontakt chemie graphit 33". Sprayed into the cap of the bottle and then applied with a fine brush. The keyboard works currently as expected (done on my A1200 a year ago, but not very often used - so no longtime evaluation).

    I'm not using the original membrane but the new hard pcb one.

  • I am in U.S.A. I checked the price for the above-mentioned product, and its $27.78 plus $31.25 for shipping the least expensive I have been able to find. Not cheap! I will see if its made under a different name.

  • In reference to Amiga keyboard fix. I have been working on a cheap fix for many months, I tried a conductive paint pen on my A1200, A3000 and found it was easy to apply on the keys that were bad and allowed it to dry for 24 hours. After a few weeks my "I" key would work. I found the paint would not stick on the rubber pads it would flake off. This conductive paint was not water based; it just would not stick to the rubber pads. I found conductive tape and applied it to my A3000 keyboards which had 50% of the keys wouldn't work. It now works great. I am going to apply it to my A1200 keyboard. The conductive tape has verry low resistance around .3 ohms. So far, the A3000 keyboard works great it been over 60 days. Do not use the tape on any keys used to play games as the Amiga keyboard debounce circuit doesn't like it. Swap out the bad game keys with good ones and use the tape on the bad keys (or the aluminum tape I mentioned). If you find any fixes let me know.

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