Keyboard oh shit moments ?

[andrewjoy]

I hope its okay to post such a thing in off topic but I just had to vent a bit and was thinking other people could share there keyboard oh shit moments.

I managed to sell my razer Black Widow Ultimate ( mx blue) to someone in work and i was just cleaning it up when i noticed part of the USB cable was frayed i have now managed to repair it but i was worried for a moment as that would have been 30 quid down the drain.

I am now seriously considering never buying a razer product again ( i only ever use there mice now as they are quite nice) as the cable inside the USB cord must have been the thinnest and crappy wire i have ever seen in a cable they where so small it must have taken me 30 mins just to tin them, for a so called "quality product" that is kind of poor.

[Muirium]

Oh Shit Moments: This one was my own fault…

After a few days use, my crappy grounding wire started going flaky. I discovered this by the hyperactive beeping coming from the "solenoid" calling me to the computer. I'm lazy, so I shrugged it off (and pulled the plug) a few times before the one that really bit. But then it came, like a tsunami. Boy, can this controller kick out a ton of key presses! My MacBook Pro is current spec, and once I pulled the USB cable out, the computer took 30 full seconds of maniacal convulsions to empty the key buffer before I could take control again. Good job I don't hoard files on my desktop like most folk, because the few things still there were all renamed and the apps I had open were all in chaos after being thrown the entire dictionary of key combos simultaneously! I had to laugh, it was damn impressive.

So I put in two grounding wires, and wrapped them a little more securely this time. Not a hint of trouble since.

[ne0phyte]

My last major oh shit moment was me knocking over a full (~400ml) glass of coke. That was 400ml of coke over my HHKB, my DAC, lots of cables and it leaked over the edge of my desk all over my computer, some power adaptors and a power strip...

Took me several hours to thoroughly clean the HHKB as I had to pop out every single stem because most keys were sticky

[andrewjoy]

30 seconds of key import after you unplugged it, impressive. It reminds me of an episode of Stargate SG1 where they have some armbands on they let them move super quick and carter is typing up a book and typed so fast that she has to wait for the computer to keep up .

Hmm i wonder if the repeat rate on my nortghate could keep up with your malfunctioning model F .

seriously the repeat rate on the omnikey ultra is insane like 2 seconds of holding a key down can fill a page on MS word

[andrewjoy]

My last major oh shit moment was me knocking over a full (~400ml) glass of coke. That was 400ml of coke over my HHKB, my DAC, lots of cables and it leaked over the edge of my desk all over my computer, some power adaptors and a power strip...

Took me several hours to thoroughly clean the HHKB as I had to pop out every single stem because most keys were sticky

i have done that with a full bottle of beer on top of my computer , it went through the vents on the top and toasted my brand new GTX 680. I managed to get it replaced, its amazing what some isopropyl and a toothbrush can achieve

[mr_a500]

I spilled an entire glass of red wine onto my Commodore 128. (..no, I wasn't drunk. I was upset not only because I was worried that I fried my C128, but because it was really good wine.)

Thankfully, after completely disassembling and cleaning, the C128 was fine.

[Muirium]

Spills are why I prefer big assed jugs. The wider the bottom, the better, for stability. Not necessarily true of humans, but it holds for drinking vessels!

@Andrew: This NovaTouch here can fire off crazy stupid rrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeepppppppppeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaattttttttt rrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaatttttttteeeeeeee if I make the mistake of ever engaging the mode. What my Kishsaver was doing, meanwhile, was rapidly cycling the state of EVERY KEY independently and simultaneously. It wasn't so much as typing as mind fucking my computer. Oh shit!

[andrewjoy]

fast repeat rate double shot alps caps n-key roll-over , dip switches to move control key enable Dvorak and so on northgate did there shit right

not quite a keyboard fail but i let the lid slam down on my 2006 macbook so many times that it split the top cover dam overpowered magnets at least each magnet was in 2 parts so i just removed 1/2 of each magnet. they are now used to magnetise screwdrivers and also my patented model m/f spring replacement tool

[Madhias]

Who at IBM is responsible for this hole? After finishing a bolt mod operation (which i canceled, ordered other screws, to make it like Phosphorglow), i thought that i forgot one screw. Everything was tightened, so i added another screw... But there is no hole in the metal frame on the other side! CRACK! Now there is a little crack in the nice, beige frame, which i fixed with glue.

[Muirium]

My least favourite thing about IBM boards, right around that spot, is the way they split the Right Shift key. If only there was a single unit key on the right! But instead they had to go and support the Brazilians…



Anyone got one of those 1.75u Shifts spare?

[Julle]

I bought a KBT/Vortex product.

[andrewjoy]

that's a funky right shift never seen one like that before

[HzFaq]

I spilled coffee on my Phantom once. I managed to get it clean and working again without too much hassel but a few keys were a little sticky for a long time, despite my attempts to clean them out with meths.

The other one, also involving my Phantom, was just after I finished re-assembling it with the new custom plate which happened to include one extra key. For some reason the new key wouldn't work, I tried changing the switch, checking the matrix, going over the firmware about 4 times looking for silly mistakes before realising that I hadn't included a diode for the new switch position...Soldered one in place (rather messily) on the back of the board and my "oh shit" turned into a "thank fuck".

[002]

Cool topic

For me, the biggest one was watching the caps on my first Filco get slowly destroyed by isopropyl alcohol after I read that I could clean the keyboard with it. I still have the caps as a reminder of just how brutal that stuff is on the ol' UV coated caps.

Another fail was similar to madhias' except I was replacing a screw on an old Epson keyboard and didn't realise that the centre screw on the back of the case was shorter than the ones on the edges. I picked up one of the edge screws and drove it straight up into the case, forming a perfect little bump on the top. I didn't even realise at first, just wondered "what is this strange bump for?...oh..."

[DanielT]

I have an oh shit moment, not keyboard related but vintage computer related: I own a couple of SUN workstations, one of them is a SUN Ultra 10 and is very dear to me. The machine had a 330Mhz CPU and I wanted to upgrade it, so I bought from eBay a 440Mhz CPU mezzanine board, happy and excited I removed the old mezzanine and placed the new one and bent almost all the pins on one side of the board ... tried to fix the pins and they started to fall off ... 40EUR down the drain. Bought a new one and this time I was really careful. I'm lucky the pins were not on the motherboard side

[JBert]

A while ago, I did have such a moment when I was soldering a Soarer Converter into a Cherry G80-3000 keyboard.

I was too lazy to remove all the caps or take the PCB out of the case, and when I was working on the thick ground plane wire I didn't notice I was touching one of my beloved "Whiterice" Round 1 keycaps. I can tell you that the smoke was anything but nice, and that keycap remains scarred for the rest of its life.

[Compgeke]

...I removed the old mezzanine and placed the new one and bent almost all the pins on one side of the board ... tried to fix the pins and they started to fall off ... 40EUR down the drain. Bought a new one and this time I was really careful. I'm lucky the pins were not on the motherboard side

I've never seen a mezzanine slot lose pins before, how bad were the tolerances on one of the connectors?

[webwit]

In the old days, I threw out G81s from keyboard hauls. Only later I discovered the keycaps were very expensive.

[photekq]

In the old days, I threw out G81s from keyboard hauls. Only later I discovered the keycaps were very expensive.

I hope you didn't throw out any dyesubs

[webwit]

Oh yeah.

[DanielT]

...I removed the old mezzanine and placed the new one and bent almost all the pins on one side of the board ... tried to fix the pins and they started to fall off ... 40EUR down the drain. Bought a new one and this time I was really careful. I'm lucky the pins were not on the motherboard side

I've never seen a mezzanine slot lose pins before, how bad were the tolerances on one of the connectors?

I still have the mezzanine so I can make some photos, the pins broke when I tried to bend them in the right position. It is the first time something like that happend to me, and I handled a lot of hardware in the last 12 years from standard to very obscure ones. On this one also the plastic on the connector was very brittle which was quite strange....

[pasph]

The tip of my desoldering gun cracked and dug the pcb of a wyse kb, another time my old Nec monitor fell off the desk and its screen met with a big momentum the edge of a Lian Li case

[Hak Foo]

I tried to use a pair of scissors instead of pliers to release the plastic standoffs on my favourite 486 mainboard.

[noesc]

I had just moved into a new apartment and only had a couch table as any kind of flat surface to work on, it's about 40cm high or so, ergonomic beyond words...

So, I had placed my desktop on this table, screen on top and case to the side.

I had opened my case for some maintenance and left it open for a couple of days (great idea btw) because I hadn't had time to finsish everything (not at all because of lazyness). The case stands with the open motherboard side towards the table, all protected so that you don't happen to kick something inside of it or what ever (see, being careful here).

Now, we happen to have a dog, a German shepherd. Said dog is about 50cm high. We also happen to drink a lot of water, even in close visinity of said open computer...

Long story short: Waterglass (about 2dl), Dog tail, Exposed computerhardware, Computer ON = BAAAD.

A ZAP, a powercord pull and some nasty words. After some mild panic and damage assessment, frenetic drying of water and some more mumbles, it turns out that the whole shebang got through this ordeal without ANY noticable permanent damage! Which is increadibly impressive seeing that the full glass of water had spilt straight into the motherboard, over the graphics card and into the PSU!

This was a year ago and I still use said computer. =)
(ashamed to say, the case is still left open, but not on the coffee table :p)

Let that be a lesson kids, don't computer and dog!

[andrewjoy]

usualy water will be fine as long as you get the power off quickly enough, things like coke beer tea with sugar are the worst as they dry into a sticky mess that is quite conductive

no power + water =ok ,i have cleaned many a dirty PCB under the tap .

[acolombo]

usualy water will be fine as long as you get the power off quickly enough, things like coke beer tea with sugar are the worst as they dry into a sticky mess that is quite conductive

no power + water =ok ,i have cleaned many a dirty PCB under the tap .

but pure Vodka is better

[cookie]

When I've seen this:






It wasn't me but it was indeed a "oh shit" moment for me!
#keyboardcrime

[andrewjoy]

at least it was only a rubber dome

[cookie]

Keep that topre-hate for yourself! We all know they are the ultimate best keyboards ever made in this universe!!!! olololo
But honestly, isn't it a pain to see this?

[andrewjoy]

Yes it is, i am only kidding about the rubber dome thing i am sure they are lovely to use. Seeing anything abused like that is bad unless its one of them new lenovo keyboards. They all deserve to burn.