EPTThen you accidentally the whole keyboard in coke/water/pee (it happens)?
You rip the cord in half, wash the fucking thing and dump your moms weekend booze all over it but oh the humanity! your ever precious g,f,a and y keys are unresponsive. Your ability to communicate over the internet is gone
This is a guide for fixing some dead keys only. If none of your keys work it's likely that the microcontroller is busted and you are better off if you throw away the pcb and build your own keyboard. You'll still save some. It doesn't look difficult, just google.
Note also that this guide is for keyboards with a back plate. With a keyboard without a plate, the process is even more simple and takes no effort at all. I left out the parts that take little to no brain activity to figure out or google.
And obviously you need to let the keyboard dry properly first
What you need, probably
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/PRFNqWa.jpg)
Multimeter
Soldering Iron
Something to remove solder: solder pump, vacuum plunger, soldering wick
Solder duh
A couple of screwdrivers
A marker
A conductive marker and/or some wire
Diodes (1N4148 are common)
some candy and music
You can probably get all of that for less than 20€/$ apart from the conductive marker
Easy, open the keyboard, grab your multimeter and check each diode (next to the keys not working only ofc) first. Most multimeters should have a setting for testing diodes. Just look for the sign of the diode
![[image loading]](http://www.alpcentauri.info/1197090736106417905vermeil_IEC_Diode_Symbol.svg.hi.png)
It basically sends a small current through and measures the voltage drop. If you don't have that setting, you need to have the keyboard powered and use some other option. Remember that diodes let current through in one way only so one way it's supposed to give a really high resistance and the other way very low. The numbers aren't of any value, what we are checking is whether or not the diode does anything.
If you find dead diodes, well, you are going to be sad. Wield the power of marker and mark the problematic areas. Now, you could simply solder the replacement diode on the visible side of the PCB, but that's nasty and you have OCD so you decide to do it the hard way.
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The hard way — your own fault, for buying a keyboard with a back plate, douchebag
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/U1izCoI.jpg)
Remove all the solder that connect the keys themselves to the PCB, you might aswell desolder the broken diodes too. Once all solder is gone, flip the keyboard and start removing the keys using two flat-head screwdrivers. The keys have a little thingamalingies you press in after which you can lift them out easily.![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/R2pPVYZ.jpg)
Once that's over with you can separate the pcb and plate ( but be careful of all kinds of plastic pieces or screws that might still be holding them together, the manufacturer has thought of many ways to make your adventure more exciting) The rest should be straightforward enough, just remember to check that your replacement diode works and you have a good solder joint before putting it all together again.
Remove all the solder that connect the keys themselves to the PCB, you might aswell desolder the broken diodes too. Once all solder is gone, flip the keyboard and start removing the keys using two flat-head screwdrivers. The keys have a little thingamalingies you press in after which you can lift them out easily.
Once that's over with you can separate the pcb and plate ( but be careful of all kinds of plastic pieces or screws that might still be holding them together, the manufacturer has thought of many ways to make your adventure more exciting) The rest should be straightforward enough, just remember to check that your replacement diode works and you have a good solder joint before putting it all together again.If you did not find dead diodes (or fixed them), check the solder joints of the keys themselves next. Use a setting for small voltages on the multimeter. Sometimes there could simply be a bad solder joint, my keyboard had a few ugly looking coming from the factory. If that doesn't do it, or there is more than one dead key, start tracing the "wiring" of the pcb connected to one dead key.
You might chance upon two things gazing into the matrix:
a) The dead keys are connected to each other
b) There is a scratch on the line between the last dead and the next working key
The fix is to either to use the conductive marker and draw over the cut or take a piece of wire and make an alternative route from the healthy key to the dead one. I tried to go all pimp and fix it with a tiny bit of solder but it's not worth the risk. So here's what you do instead:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ecOMa7d.jpg)
If that did it, YAY. If it ain't goddamn working, you dun goofed. If you aren't an experienced solderer, you might need a few tries to get a good connection.
