80-Bus News

What did I do to the keyboard whilst I had it apart? I’m sure what follows voids any guarantees, so you have been warned. I removed the keyboard from the case. It was then I saw that the sticky over the unused keys had curled and peeled off and that was where the muck was getting in and, to not overemphasise it, the sticky side of the tape was filthy. I undid the 8 or so screws on the pcb side of the keyboard, noting that 3 of them had nylon insulating washers under them although I couldn’t see why, and separated the pcb from the keyframe, paying careful attention to the positions of the rubber sealing strips. The true horror of what had been going on was then revealed. The rubber strips are also slightly sticky and were far from clean, the keypads had a lot of little bits sticking to them, but the pcb appeared clean. The topside of the pcb was cleaned with a soft cloth dampened with pure acetone (chemist, 20p) and the end of each keypad was also cleaned using a cotton wool bud, again just dampened with acetone. When all was bright and clean, the rubber strips were wiped to remove the adhereing muck and the keyframe blown out to remove any more muck floating about. The keyboard was then reassembled being very careful to see that the rubber strips were seated square. What was left of the sticky patches over the spare key holes was removed and replaced with heavy duty packing tape which has both a stronger adhesive and being thinner, less tendency to curl. Everthing was replaced in the case and tested, all keys were working, and all seems well. Sometime, when I find out which is the offending 10nF, I’ll change it. In the mean time it remains to be seen how well it will continue to work, I am now happy that the only place muck can get in is down the key stems, so we shall see what we shall see. The whole job took about 45 minutes, but didn’t improve my temper any. A further late extra from Gemini is that a certain manufacture of chips has been found to less satisfactory than others, being loaded capacitively by the nice curly cable now fitted to the Galaxy machines. Don’t try to change this chip yourself. Return the keyboard to your dealer.

The letters

Some time ago Paul passed a large envelope to me and said, “That’s your lot, see if anything is useful.”, so I did as I usually do, shoved the envelope in my cupboard to see light next time I got round to sorting out letters. Well they’ve just reemerged, and I’ve found three letters and five articles. The articles I’ll read tonight, the letters, well here goes.

Polydos

The first from Mr. Toler of Cheshire, admonishes me for not having heard of Polydos, and for mucking Mr. Trim’s database about (see volume 2 issue 1). Well as I said before, sorry, we can’t know everything, can we? Anyway, Mr. Toler goes on to praise the virtues of Polydos, and suggests to Chris Blackmore (Dr. Dark) that, “He includes Polydos in his ‘Circle of Iron’”. I hope Mr. Toler means to include programs for use under Polydos, rather than Polydos on the disks, as Polydos is copyright of the boys in Denmark, and any infringements would probably mean a reinvasion by the Vikings. Anyway, there you are Chris, I don’t know whether you could cater for it in the ‘Circle of Iron’, but perhaps you should think about it as Polydos has quite a following.

Naspen

Naspen is still alive and kicking although I know that Lucas only managed to sell a grand total of three last quarter. Anyway Steve Stubbs of Inverurie has come up with a little mod. I quote:

“One of the more obvious omissions in Naspen is the ability to print multiple copies of the same thing without having to press ‘P’ each time. I use a small