On Fri, 08 Jun 2007 17:14:09 -0400, Sam Goldwasser wrote:

Meat Plow writes:

Typically the switches in a keyboard are a rubber dome (for lack of a
better word) on the bottom of the key with a conductive pad in the
middle and a contact area on a pc board for all the keys. Unless you
have something very unique there are no replaceable switches.

Rubber dome or other capacitive sensor on modern keyboards with no
tactile feel.

Actual mechanical switches on my favorite Northgate and clone KBs.

In the latter case, the individual switches can be unsoldered, popped
out, and replaced easily. In many cases, they can even be disassembled
and cleaned.

The keyswitches are small black cubes around 1/2" on a side, with a little
plunger on top that the key cap fits onto.

They can indeed be disassembled and cleaned, but there's a number of very
tiny parts inside, including a very tiny coil spring, and it's extremely
difficult to put them back together. (No sign of any rubber domes.) So, I
think replacement is the only reasonable option.

It sounds like the strategy is to find one or a few garage sale keyboards
that seem to have the right kind of switch, and scavenge keyswitches from
them.

Question: Are all the switches in a keyboard uniform? In other words,
should I use a rarely-used keyswitch from the donor keyboard for
heavily-used keys like Backspace, because they'll be less worn, or should
I use e.g. the Backspace key from the donor keyboard for Backspace,
because it's a tougher keyswitch?

Thanks again,

Reid