On Sun, 14 Mar 1999, bluoval wrote:
> Would alcohol damage anything?
Not if used carefully. Regular rubbing alcohol is conductive, so if you
get it inside the key it will likely cause the key to short. I learned
this lesson the hard way.
I used to be so good to my beloved Apple //e when I was a kid. Every
month I'd wipe down the entire machine, monitor and disk drives with
Windex. I'd really scrub the thing and make it sparkle again. I'd also
clean any grime that'd accumulated on the keycaps. One day when I was
cleaning I noticed the 'A' key was getting a little sticky. So I thought
that rubbing alcohol would be a good cleaning agent. So I put a few drops
on the key stem and worked it a while until it didn't stick anymore. I
turned the machine on and for some reason an 'A' started spewing across
the screen. After a few seconds I realized that the alcohol shorted the
key. I tried everything to dry that damn key out. I ran a blow dryer on
it for 20 minutes to no avail. I stuck a straw up to it and blew through
the straw hoping to blow it dry with my own breath but I think that only
resulted in spit being introduced into the key, shorting it further.
Finally, after I passed out and came to, I decided to unsolder the key as
my computer was unusable at this point, since I couldn't type any command
that wasn't 'AAAAAAAAAAAAAA..." I then wrote a machine language driver
that made the TAB key (which is next to the 'A' on the Apple //e) become
the 'A' key. This only worked on DOS 3.3 programs, since I was a pro at
hacking DOS 3.3 but wasn't very versed with ProDOS device drivers.
After I got sick of that solution, I soldered in two wires where the key
used to be that I would touch together to produce an 'A'. After I got
sick of that, I soldered in the joystick button of a joystick I'd broken
apart. It was a little stiff, and a little higher than the other keys,
but it sure beat the hell out of touching two wires together. I lived
with that for a while until I ordered a new key from a mail order parts
supplier. Unfortunately, the idiots sent me a //gs key! So I sent it
back, but I never got my key or my money back. I was now out $4.65
(something like that) plus shipping, which was a lot for a kid with no job
and no allowance. So I lived with the joystick key for maybe a year until
I finally ordered and got the proper //e key.
So the moral of this story is, don't drink rubbing alcohol.
Sellam Alternate e-mail: dastar_at_siconic.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don't rub the lamp if you don't want the genie to come out.
Coming in 1999: Vintage Computer Festival 3.0
See
http://www.vintage.org/vcf for details!
[Last web site update: 02/15/99]
Received on Mon Mar 15 1999 - 00:12:42 GMT