• Updated 2023-07-12: Hello, Guest! Welcome back, and be sure to check out this follow-up post about our outage a week or so ago.

New PCB for Apple III Keyboard?

iJol

Active member
Hi guys!

I own an Apple III for a few months now and started restoring it. Unfortunately it seems, that someone had spilled something over the keyboard decades ago and the liquid collected underneath the PCB assembly for the arrow keys. The traces are absolutely gone, there is no continuity and there is a bit rust on the keyboard itself which I have to remove soon. The keys seems to work, but I don't want to do a lot of bodge-wiring there.

Is here any wiz who can make a new PCB? I guess it's not as hard but I have absolutely no idea of making PCBs.

Regards from Germany,
Julian
 

Attachments

  • tempImageqOJpsO.png
    tempImageqOJpsO.png
    15.6 MB · Views: 28

Byrd

Well-known member
I’m daunted by bodge wiring usually, but this is one unit where the traces are dead obvious and you could do a very neat job using insulated fine gauge wire - maybe give it a go before looking for alternatives?
 

joshc

Well-known member
Are you sure the traces are bad? They look very dirty and corroded but I would try scraping them back to see how bad they really are. Desolder the solder joints and redo those as well. I’d be going for some quick bodge wires if the traces are broken, shouldn’t need a whole new board just for that.
 

iJol

Active member
Are you sure the traces are bad? They look very dirty and corroded but I would try scraping them back to see how bad they really are. Desolder the solder joints and redo those as well. I’d be going for some quick bodge wires if the traces are broken, shouldn’t need a whole new board just for that.
Yep, underneath there is nothing. Scraped away, checked for continuity - there absolutely gone
 

jajan547

Well-known member
1668603005211.jpeg

1668603290062.jpeg
I think you may be able to hack a iie platinum keyboard to somewhat work and also by using this it may work, but that’s just my guess.
 

stepleton

Well-known member
I think it might be worth giving circuit board design a try: this is probably one of the easier boards you can replicate. Especially if it's single-sided.

In fact, if it's single-sided, as would be my guess given how the traces wiggle around. here's what you can do. Desolder the components, give the bare PCB a good clean, and then stick it into a flatbed scanner. Take the resulting image and trace the traces in a draw program like Inkscape. Try to copy the traces accurately and make sure that the dimensions of your recreation on the screen match the board in real life.

Once you've got this file, come back and we can take it from there --- or maybe you can work out what else to do online.

At the end of the day, when you're designing a PCB, all you're doing is making a handful of graphics files that you send to the PCB manufacturer to turn into a board.
 

jajan547

Well-known member
I think it might be worth giving circuit board design a try: this is probably one of the easier boards you can replicate. Especially if it's single-sided.

In fact, if it's single-sided, as would be my guess given how the traces wiggle around. here's what you can do. Desolder the components, give the bare PCB a good clean, and then stick it into a flatbed scanner. Take the resulting image and trace the traces in a draw program like Inkscape. Try to copy the traces accurately and make sure that the dimensions of your recreation on the screen match the board in real life.

Once you've got this file, come back and we can take it from there --- or maybe you can work out what else to do online.

At the end of the day, when you're designing a PCB, all you're doing is making a handful of graphics files that you send to the PCB manufacturer to turn into a board.
I was actually going to take a whack at trying to recreate these too was planning on starting later today.
 

iJol

Active member
I got magnetic wire and did a quick and dirty bodge-wiring, had to repair the Up-Key because the metal was bent and now it's working again :) Due to rust I have to desolder the whole keyboard soon and derust it anyways, then I see if I can maybe create a new PCB.

Thanks a lot!
 
Top