deskthority

I felt like i have to restore my first vintage keyboard i own, chicony kb-5161a with blue alps switches. So i started it few days ago.
Today after cleaning and restoring every switch and solder them back. Then with pluged on keyboard and solder iron i picked up keyboard and somehow touch iron. When i looked after that at keyboard all thre lights were truned on. I touched a controler and fast diagnose. It is dead. I know what i did was dumb. But also i think is quite funny, idk how i should feel. Its quite... sad?

Anyways. Im looking for help for making it alive again. I would like to replace controler but i think it is unussual and hard to find but maybe somebody of you have one, maybe whole pcb that i can buy. Advices will also be useful.

F

Dang that sucks, but I guess it happens to the best of them. Good luck with getting a new controller or PCB!

ppCircle wrote: ↑

26 Mar 2020, 03:09

I felt like i have to restore my first vintage keyboard i own, chicony kb-5161a with blue alps switches. So i started it few days ago.
Today after cleaning and restoring every switch and solder them back. Then with pluged on keyboard and solder iron i picked up keyboard and somehow touch iron. When i looked after that at keyboard all thre lights were truned on. I touched a controler and fast diagnose. It is dead. I know what i did was dumb. But also i think is quite funny, idk how i should feel. Its quite... sad?

Anyways. Im looking for help for making it alive again. I would like to replace controler but i think it is unussual and hard to find but maybe somebody of you have one, maybe whole pcb that i can buy. Advices will also be useful.

F

F, my dude.

I know your pain, but it was with my NTC 6151N, the first Alps board I ever had, blue Alps too for that matter. Somehow, I managed to brick it when trying to figure out if I could make it NKRO with diodes.

That sucked, but bricking a 5161A PCB is a huuuge oof. It is indeed very difficult to find that model, especially with blue Alps.

I finally found a 5161A a while a back and swapped its PCB into another NTC. That felt like finally getting what I had wanted after all those years.

Best of luck in finding a solution.

Okay, so this actually happened to me with my Acer KB-101-A. My solution was to handwire it all and make it a usb compatible, programmable keyboard. I can help you go through with this if you would like. If you have diodes on it, it will be significantly easier. Seeing that it is the A model, this should definitely be doable, to simply wire up the matrix to a teensy 2.0++, and create a firmware for it.

It happened to me as well with an NTC white alps board. Switch donor is what i advice, build a custom with them.

shine wrote: ↑

26 Mar 2020, 21:19

It happened to me as well with an NTC white alps board. Switch donor is what i advice, build a custom with them.

This is too good keyboard to make it as switch donor. It don't deserve this end

ZedTheMan wrote: ↑

26 Mar 2020, 19:04

Okay, so this actually happened to me with my Acer KB-101-A. My solution was to handwire it all and make it a usb compatible, programmable keyboard. I can help you go through with this if you would like. If you have diodes on it, it will be significantly easier. Seeing that it is the A model, this should definitely be doable, to simply wire up the matrix to a teensy 2.0++, and create a firmware for it.

I think of it as a last resort.
I would like to keep original shape of keyboard/ components and to use original cable. So for now i'm looking for pcb/ controller. If there is gonna be not response then i will contact with you

ZedTheMan wrote: ↑

26 Mar 2020, 19:04

Okay, so this actually happened to me with my Acer KB-101-A. My solution was to handwire it all and make it a usb compatible, programmable keyboard. I can help you go through with this if you would like. If you have diodes on it, it will be significantly easier. Seeing that it is the A model, this should definitely be doable, to simply wire up the matrix to a teensy 2.0++, and create a firmware for it.

I agree with this, finding a replacement controller is unlikely given how old the board is. Plus, you will have NKRO

Why not just mount the switches in another alps board? The switches are the valuable thing here right? Chicony boards aren't that great... unless I'm missing something.

ddfraser1 wrote: ↑

08 Apr 2020, 01:08

Why not just mount the switches in another alps board? The switches are the valuable thing here right? Chicony boards aren't that great... unless I'm missing something.

Yes and no.
5161A is rare especially with blue alps (one of few boards with blues with full nkro?). Also, in my opinion it's almost best or even the best board with blues. And also first vintage keyboard i bought so.
This is just to good keyboard to left it like this.

ppCircle wrote: ↑

08 Apr 2020, 21:35

ddfraser1 wrote: ↑

08 Apr 2020, 01:08

Why not just mount the switches in another alps board? The switches are the valuable thing here right? Chicony boards aren't that great... unless I'm missing something.

Yes and no.
5161A is rare especially with blue alps (one of few boards with blues with full nkro?). Also, in my opinion it's almost best or even the best board with blues. And also first vintage keyboard i bought so.
This is just to good keyboard to left it like this.

Interesting. Cool! I've never tried blues in that one. Currently using the Leading Edge DC-3014 with blues. It's the best sounding one I've found for blues so far. Yeah, bummer if it was your first board :/

I looked around my scrap keyboards but didnt find anything with that exact chip :/ That chip is available on ebay for only a couple dollars but then the issue is how you would program it. Unfortunately you might not have much luck with repairing that specific pcb.

If you want to keep the look of the board as original as possible, perhaps have a custom pcb made? Thats the closest thing to all original I can think of, and as a bonus the whole board would probably be worth more being usb / programmable now

Or perhaps even using another lesser chicony keyboard with the same layout for just the pcb and replacing the one in the 5161a with it