What are Stackpole keyboards?

[DavidMil]

Brad at Best says he is out of Hi-Tek keyboards for the 800, but he has a couple of Stackpole keyboards left.

I have no idea what the difference is, so could someone please enlighten me.

 

Thanks,

DavidMil

[JR>]

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/221978-atari-800-not-xl-keyboard-basics/

[DavidMil]

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/221978-atari-800-not-xl-keyboard-basics/

 

That's what I wanted to know.

Thank you JR>

 

David

[ACML]

Are you sure the current keyboard is no longer serviceable? Most can be fixed. Why do you need a new keyboard?

[+DrVenkman]

Are you sure the current keyboard is no longer serviceable? Most can be fixed. Why do you need a new keyboard?

 

Perhaps, like many of us with Stackpole keyboards (all three of my 800s, for instance), some or all of the plungers have corner-cracks that allow the keycaps to pop off too easily. I keep saying that if I win the lottery, one thing I'll do is fund replacement keyboard mechs for the 800.

[ACML]

 

Perhaps, like many of us with Stackpole keyboards (all three of my 800s, for instance), some or all of the plungers have corner-cracks that allow the keycaps to pop off too easily. I keep saying that if I win the lottery, one thing I'll do is fund replacement keyboard mechs for the 800.

I bought a NOS Stackpole from Best and 9 of the keys popped right off. I happened to be in San Jose at the store the next day and Brad replaced all the bad plungers. Great guy! I'd steer away from Stackploes if possible.

[DavidMil]

Are you sure the current keyboard is no longer serviceable? Most can be fixed. Why do you need a new keyboard?

 

As with so many other Hi-Tec keyboards, the space bar quit working. Pulling the space bar off and checking the connector

underneath showed that the two sides were making good contact. So I fired up the desoldering gun and when I tried to suck

the solder out, both pins came right out of the board and into my desoldering gun. So now I desoldered all keys and removed

the circuit board, and sure enough both are broken off at the plastic. I'm pretty sure I can solder a couple of new wires from

the connectors to the circuit board, but that's not the only problem with this old keyboard. As DrVenkman noted above several

of the white plungers are cracked and the keys tend to pop off. This can be gotten around with a little super glue, but I'd like

to have a good replacement and keep this one as an emergency spare.

 

David

[ACML]

David,

I assume the failure was at position #57 on the back of the keyboard PCB? When you say break, do you mean they physically broke in two? If so, that's a bit different than I've experienced. On the three Hi-Tek spacebar failures I've fixed the failure was on the solder pad at location #57. The whole pin was there, it just fell out because the solder pad failed. As to the keys popping off, I found a neat trick that might help.

 

I've tried to fix cracked plungers on both Hi Tek (white) and Stack Pole (yellow) without success. The problem is that they are very thin and have very tight tolerances between the plunger and keyboard. Just one "mil" (0.001") added thickness is too much. The key might press down and make contact, but the plunger binds and sticks in the down position. Only remedy that has worked for me is R&R (remove and replace). Here is trick I found works sometimes. The white plunger has the little cross bar running North/South that fits in between the little gold contact fingers. I've found that you can pull the white plunger out, rotate the white plunger 180 degrees and re-insert. Example: Crack is in the upper left corner. Pull the white plunger (firmly grab a wall of the white plunger with a pair of needle nose pliers and pull straight up). There will be a little resistance because the white plunge as two little teeth that hold it in as a stop, but it will come out. Just be sure to pull the plunger straight up. Rotate the plunger so the crack went from the upper left corner to the lower right corner. Using the needle nose pliers, push it back in. Remember there are only two ways the plunger can go in due to the white crossbar that goes between the little gold contact fingers (that's why you can only rotate 180 degrees). The crossbar on the plunger has to be North/South, not East/West because the little gold contact fingers are East/West. By changing the corner that is cracked, I've found the the key stays put probably due to the direction of force as you press the key down.

[DavidMil]

David,

I assume the failure was at position #57 on the back of the keyboard PCB? When you say break, do you mean they physically broke in two? If so, that's a bit different than I've experienced. On the three Hi-Tek spacebar failures I've fixed the failure was on the solder pad at location #57. The whole pin was there, it just fell out because the solder pad failed.

 

No, the pads are good, the pins are gone. I've attached a picture to show you.

 

David

[DavidMil]

A bit of other info about HI-TEK and Stackpole:

HI-TEK filed a law suit against Stackpole for copyright infringement but lost. Even though the finished product was the

exact same, the manufacturing process was totally different. So HI-TEK changed the design of their keyboards and

abandoned the design that made such wonderful Atari 800 keyboards. The new design was very popular with IBM's,

HP's and VAX terminals, but alas Atari went with a cheaper design. *

 

DavidMil

 

* Info from HI-TEK Corporation History site.

[DavidMil]

I wanted to say something about lifted pads.

 

As I do a lot of desoldering, every once in a while I will lift a pad. To solve this I bought 100 eyelets, a proper sized

drill bit and a finishing tool from a company called International Eyelets. Now if I lift a pad, I just drill out the hole,

insert a eyelet in the hole and use the finishing tool to make a new plated through hole pad. This works really great!

 

DavidMil

[ACML]

 

No, the pads are good, the pins are gone. I've attached a picture to show you.

 

David

I stand corrected. I never broke the keyboard down to the level you did and I can now see that my pins did indeed break off. Actually, it was always one of the two. I blindly inserted a new lead into the through hole from the back of the PCB, wiggled it into position until it made continuity and soldered the new lead at the PCB side. Now that I see what's behind the PCB, I likely was only making surface contact with the switch, but it was good enough to allow it to work again. Good luck. Looks like you just need to replace the two missing leads. I have some new white and yellow plungers if you need some.

[DavidMil]

As Nezgar recently said: Success!

 

I bought a non working HI-TEK keyboard on ebay and pulled the contacts out of one of the spaces (where the Break key was

to be specific) and pushed them into the hole for the space bar. And the keyboard is working again! Of course I had to re-solder

every set of connections to the circuit board, but that's cool to get a good working keyboard for my other 800. Brad at Best sent

me a half dozen good plastic plungers so I replaced the worst cracked plungers and put a drop of super glue on the others, and

the keyboard now works great!

 

DavidMil