Keyboard Cleaning

drbrain@segment7.net (Eric Hodel) — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 22:31:25 -0700

I spilled a bit of Henry Weinhard’s Orange Cream Gourmet Soda onto my Powerbook’s keyboard and had sticky tab, shift and q keys. After sufficient annoyance I searched google for how to remove the key caps so I could keep them from sticking when I let go of the key. This guy who did a dvorak conversion of his G4 Powerbooks had the pictures I wanted, they demonstrated that the key caps should pop right off without breaking. Instead of his fancy key-puller tool I just used a 1/8 Craftsman flat-head screwdriver to pry up the edge of the key cap. I pried off the bottom, but it may be better to take the tops of first due to the construction of the riser.

For the q and a keys were hard to reattach to once I took them off because the scissors riser came apart. I had to remove both pieces of the riser, snap the two pieces back together then re-attach it to the keyboard. I used the screwdriver to help guide riser parts back together. One part has posts that fit inside the other, so I used some careful pressure to guide them together. The key-cap should snap down easily after the riser is correctly installed.

Segment7: Keyboard Cleaning

Keyboard Cleaning