Compaq Portable Restoration (Part Two)

Hello, and welcome back to the Compaq portable restoration part 2.

Now even as a refresher on what happened within the last episode, I had problems with the motherboard, and therefore the video card, and therefore the RAM, and therefore the floppy drive, and therefore the keyboard. And, I managed to urge most of The issues squared away internally, So, the primary thing I would like to tackle is getting this keyboard working. So, beyond just cleaning up and retrograding the keys, I also got to replace all of those pads, which we talked about. And, the whole case must be cleaned, and there's another little internal modifications I would like to try to to also. So, let's get started!

I'm actually unsure what color these are literally alleged to be originally, but once I compare with the case plastics, it just seems to be like perhaps the keys are a touch yellowed. They are doing got to be cleaned anyway, so I' m getting to plow ahead and take all of them off. So, I'm getting to use the key puller, now when pulling a key off of a keyboard that I've never pulled a key off before, I don't if, you know, I'd find yourself breaking it, so I'm getting to pick a key that I don't care much about it, so I'll start with this one. 

That way if I even have to attach it back on Or something it won't be an enormous deal. And it's love it came off pretty easily. All right, so a couple of notes about springs. You would possibly wonder why I'm putting the springs in here and I'm putting the keys in there. Well, the thing is, I would like to form sure I even have something that I can pack up when I'm done, because these springs, if they stray or fall within the floor, they're almost impossible to find.

The other thing I would like to warn you about is that while these two springs here look pretty similar, this one here is for the key and this one here is simply for a daily key. And you've got to form bound to keep these Separate because the key, it's tons stronger springiness transverse. So tons stiffer since it's a much bigger key to maneuver up, so you don't want to urge these involved. So I always store the key one separately. 

And while this is often not Some Windex should clean this up easily. Also, check this out. A bunch of these original pads just fell off during this process. Here's a close-up of 1 of the keys. I just wanted to offer you a thought of how dirty they're. They aren't by any stretch the worst I've seen. Not even close, but definitely still need cleaning. And here's what it's like after cleaning. I wanted to point out something else. 

In cleaning these, I noticed, particularly with this type of key that has this extra bit accurately, if you flip it over, you'll actually see the first color of those keys on rock bottom. So yeah, they're definitely yellowed. As always, this process is tedious. Expect to spend an hour approximately cleaning all of the keys individually like this. 

I like to recommend you only activate a number of your favorite music to assist pass the time. I want to retro rite these, but So, I won't be doing any retro rite outdoors. That being the case, I'll use the stove. Now I want to say a couple of things about this. Temperature is extremely important here. You would like to urge the water somewhere between 130 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit.

If you're less than that, it won't work alright, but if you're above that, it can melt the plastic. I've already had some angry emails from people that boiled their keys, which subsequently melted them, then So, just to line the record straight, I never said to boil the keys. So, once we've the proper temperature, I'll plow ahead and pour the keys in there. Then I'll add some peroxide. People always inquire from me what proportion to use.

There is no set amount. If you employ less it'll just take longer. So don't worry a few certain amount. So I'll check the temperature again. It's gone down because I added the cold peroxide in there. But what I'm getting to do is about a 5 minute timer to job my memory to return back in here and check on this.

And so every 5 minutes I'm getting to test the temperature and adjust the controls as required to stay it within the sweet spot. After 4 or 5 times you'll get the temperature stable enough that you simply can let it set for extended periods While they don't need retro rite, they're dirty. Sometimes it's really hard to ascertain it on camera, so I'll And here's what it's like all done. 

And I'll attempt to offer you an in depth up comparison with the pc case, which remains dirty. So hopefully you get the thought. Subsequent thing I'm getting to do is take away what's left of those old pads. I found this tiny tool to be very helpful. You'll notice that the froth is so degraded that the But, I even have to urge the entire thing out of there, so I want to urge underneath it. And there we go, all removed.

OK, therefore the keys are cooking for about 2 hours, so I feel they're probably done. I'll just pour out the water and peroxide. Then I'll rinse it out a couple of times with regular water to form sure all The peroxide is gone. And for those inevitable comments about rinsing a hot pan with cold water, confine mind there's only about 30 degrees difference within the temperature of the water and therefore the pan since I didn't heat it to boiling. 

I'll leave these here to dry. Now, I would like talk a touch about these pads and the way they work. They're made from essentially 3 parts. You've got a spongy foam within the middle, then a rigid plastic piece on the highest. This is often the part that really snaps into the key and holds the pad in situ.

On rock bottom you've got a conductive material. And once I say conductive material, I should really clarify how that works. Even this part is another little sandwich, with a conductive coating on one side and a non-conductive layer of Mylar on rock bottom.

You see, these keyboards are literally capacitive in design, in order that they even have more in common together with your tablet or smart phone, therein they detect capacitance. That's why I used to be ready to type on the bare PCB using my fingers within So, when this tiny layer is pressed up against the pads on the board, it creates a really small capacitor, which is what lets it know the keys are pressed. And, so that's how this stuff work. So I ordered Some materials I assumed I could use to form my very own new pads. Starting with this foam. I'll got to cut a smaller section out. 

Then I'm getting to use this emergency blanket for the capacitive layer. I'll cut an identical sized piece of this. Subsequent thing I want to try to to is get this blanket pulled tight so it'll be flat. I feel taping it to the table will accomplish that decently well. There we go. That seems to figure. 

I'm getting to add an additional layer around it because I'll be using spray adhes I've and don't want it on my workbench. So, the thought is I'm getting to glue this piece of froth to the blanket, then I'll use one among these stencil sheets to make that rigid layer on the highest. So , it'll go like this.

OK, so I ’m getting to do this particular spray adhesive. I ’ve never used it before, so I even have no idea how well it'll or won’t work.

OK, here goes the froth. It seems it's kind of tacky already, so that's kind of an honest sign. Here's some more adhesive. Then here's the ultimate piece of the sandwich. I'll set something heavy on here while it dries. Skipping I'll remove the tape. And here we go, this is often our little sandwich. I bought this hole punch of the right size. I feel it's meant for leather, but I feel. I'll just pick a random spot and see what happens. I'll got to push these out of there with a screw driver.

OK, so here are my first two test pieces. And immediately I can see the adhesive simply didn’t work.

OK, so apparently the adhesive I used is just not getting to be suitable for bonding these two materials. It actually seems like it did a touch better job bonding the plastic to the froth than it did the Mylar. So, I actually ordered all of I actually wanted to offer it an attempt and see if I could make it work, and while I could probably find another adhesives that might eventually make this work, there's actually not much point because , you see after I released the video, the blokes from TexElec sent me this nifty little box of stuff here.

Kevin saw my last video and apparently he sells these pads already pre-made. I had already goggled for such a thing before I started this project and didn't find it, so I'm glad he contacted me about it. These look pretty He also sent me another parts which will or might not be related here. This is often apparently for the PCJr adapter boards he made and sent me a short time back. And this may be helpful. It's a 1 MB RAM board which will add most any XT class machine to urge you up to 1 MB of RAM. You'll set the DIP switches to work out which banks you would like turned on.

OK, I'm getting to plow ahead and begin installing these pads. Unfortunately, you can't just press them in like this, which I used to be hoping you'll do. There are 4 little clips on each key, as you 'll see here. And what you'll need to do is take a touch pointy tool like this and confirm that the plastic circle pops into place under each of these 4 clips. 

This is often getting to take a short time. I feel I spent an hour approximately putting all of those in. So again, might also get you some music going and be prepared to require the time to try to to these. And here it's finished, with all the pads in situ.

OK, so I ’m close to put the keys back on.

And, of course, I took an image of the keyboard before I took the keys off. And I'll tell you immediately, I made an error and did a number of this out of order. I'll explain and you'll see What I'm talking a few bit later. I can certainly see the retrograding helped with the color of the keys. Remember this transistor here. It'd be an influence regulator. I didn't check out the opposite side. Anyway, if you recall that really screws on here, and there was some thermal grease within the middle.

So I'll plow ahead and put some new transistor grease on this one and spread it around a touch. Now we will put that back on here. Then I'll put that screw back in situ. And, as you'll see. I even have replace the bazillion little screws on rock bottom of the board. Now, here's where things got really annoying. Once I visited test the keyboard, the interior floppy drive had quit working again. So I borrowed one from my Tandy and sat it on top until I had time to mess with the interior drive again.

Anyway, the drive worked, but the keyboard, not such a lot. Literally, only a couple of keys actually worked. So, I had to require it back apart again. Watching it, I found a couple of pads that were probably not installed. properly, including I also noticed the most contributed some corrosion down one among the pins, so I cleaned that off. 

But that shouldn't keep numerous keys from not working. So I took one among the pads and just I put it back together and tried again, then I made a decision to start out marking off all of the keyboard. I put it back together and tried again, then I made a decision to start out marking off all of the keys that didn't add an effort to seek out some kind of rhyme or reason. And here we go.

Of course, I couldn't test the function keys at now. But most keys weren't working. It had been at now I noticed there was tons of small gunk, including fingerprints, most also dirt and other debris stuck to those pads. At now I noticed most of this gunk had been picked up from my workbench, which was still somewhat dirty once I started putting the keys back on earlier. 

That's because, whenever I pressed one among these keys onto the keyboard, it had been pressing. If you were to require a glance at a cross-section of the pad because it contacts the PCB… and if you were to concentrate really close it should appear as if this.

However, when there's even a little amount of debris, it'll create a niche like this. If it were a conductive system, it wouldn't matter, but having an uneven surface disrupts the capacitance. So, I cleaned rock bottom of each pad With alcohol. I also cleaned the PCB itself. I also used some canned air to maybe get anything I missed. And then, I used to be right down to this. Granted, not perfect, but far better. I just replaced those pads with some spares I had, which just about got everything working again, as you'll see here.

In fact, now I finally had enough keys working to run the check-it program, which features a handy key testing system, where I could finally test every single key. And, it works. It had been at now, I still had a Kevin from TexElec did come across and offer to assist repair a number of that. And he actually did find yourself taking the stepper motor out of the disc. 

And, even replacing some more programs on the motherboard. And, unfortunately, I didn't get any video footage of that, but we were ready to get everything working including it now detects the complete 640K of RAM on the motherboard. the XT-IDE interface and mounted the compact flash reader in one among the cardboard slots on the side.

And this figured out perfect, because with the cardboard fully installed, the side entrance will actually close. Then I used to be ready to format the drive from my DOS boot disk. By now, I had cleaned the keyboard and therefore the two removable panels ..

And even on video here, you'll clearly see a contrast between those and therefore the places I haven't cleaned yet. I had done all of this cleaning with wet bicarbonate of soda, and it had been very effective. And as for this string on top, I decided that it had been just decorative, and didn't actually hold the handle together in any way, so I just decided to tug it out and cut it off at the ends. 

And here it's, all done. It's immaculate, almost fresh. Time to check it out. You know, the CGA graphics doesn't actually look that bad on this screen. In some ways, it's better on a bicarbonate screen because you get 4 reminder gray, or during this case, 4 reminder green. I feel that's probably better than the magenta and cyan. I didn't know it was this bad until editing. Of course, being this thing is 4.77 Mhz, it can only run maybe 10% of MS-DOS games, mostly the games that came call at the 1980s.

However, it can run Planet X3 and it runs just fine. Then that finally wraps up the restoration on this computer. I hope to bring you a documentary on this thing pretty soon, within subsequent few months because I feel this computer features a really fascinating history, which I anticipate to bringing to you. I also want to offer out an enormous because of Kevin from TexElec, also as DJ, and Raymond, all of whom helped repair this computer in how or another. 

And by the way, if it weren't obvious, this has been one among the tougher restoration projects that I've taken on. Now, I don't know if all of those machines are going to be as difficult to urge working as this one was, but I certainly Anyway, that's about it for the instant, so stick around for what's arising next and thanks for watching!

Compaq Portable 1 Restoration (Part one)