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PowerBook 180 - some keyboard keys don't function

luRaichu

luRaichu

Well-known member
This is my 2nd attempt at replacing the ribbon. No boot chime with this cable, just random lines on-screen but the brightness control works. Also the HD won't spin up with this interconnect board AND the LCD plugged in so perhaps there's a short. (same behavior as with the first attempt)

Aaaaaand now looking at the photos I probably cut the ribbon cable too short. Should I give it one last go with longer, fresh ribbon?
 

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croissantking

croissantking

Well-known member
Ah, damn. I’m surprised as the work seems neat. I would check continuity on all wires, checking for shorts to neighbouring wires; but bearing in mind that some are grouped together (I annotated a photo on my repair thread showing which ones).
 
H

halkyardo

Well-known member
My suspicion would be that the cable was slightly misaligned at one end or the other, and one of the contact 'blades' has nicked into an adjacent wire as well as the one that it's supposed to contact. I'd try another attempt at rebuilding it, using a fresh piece of ribbon cable. With connectors like those, you've really got to make sure that the cable is both sitting centered in the connector, and that it's perfectly straight, before punching it down. It's very easy to get it wrong, especially with the fine-pitch cables like those.
 
croissantking

croissantking

Well-known member
luRaichu said:
I find these are all tied together. Is it normal?
Click to expand...
I’ve double checked this on an interconnect board with an original cable.
See the photo below, showing the same group you asked about from the other side of the board. The red group as you can see is clearly tied to a ground plane, so you’ve shorted a couple of pins (the blue pair) to ground that shouldn’t be.

Are all other lines toning out good?
 

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luRaichu

luRaichu

Well-known member
croissantking said:
Are all other lines toning out good?
Click to expand...
Yeah, I think everything's good except for those pins being blobbed together as far as I've checked. Although, the difficulty of getting the new ribbon cable in and functioning correctly leaves me unmotivated. Maybe I'll try again today...
 
croissantking

croissantking

Well-known member
luRaichu said:
Yeah, I think everything's good except for those pins being blobbed together as far as I've checked. Although, the difficulty of getting the new ribbon cable in and functioning correctly leaves me unmotivated. Maybe I'll try again today...
Click to expand...
You could maybe split off and replace a thin section of the ribbon, as the short is close to the edge of the connector.
 
luRaichu

luRaichu

Well-known member
I redid it and... now everything works again. You've gotta leave a fair margin of ribbon cable sticking out from the back end of the connectors.
 
demik

demik

Well-known member
Good job ! I still need to find some motivation to do mine. I will grab the cable you used
 
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