Moisture damage after cleaning?

[ghostdawg187]

I have cleaned my Datacomp DFK 192 on Wednesday and let everything dry over night. I have put everything together yesterday and plugged my keyboard into the computer. Everything went fine and I could use the keyboard the whole day. Today I have worked for 2 hours and then suddenly it stopped working. When plugging it in all 3 LEDS power up, but no key press is recognized. I thought there is some moisture still inside the board, used some spray duster, have put it on the heater for some hours with all keycaps and case removed, used isopropanyl to clean the pcb but it stil does not work.

Do I have damaged the keyboard? What else can I do? I have cleaned some keyboards before, never had an issue with drying it over night and using a spray duster. Those SMK switches have been so nice. I think the keyboard is dead.

PS: I do not possess any skills concerning repairing electronic objects, so basically I think I am running out of any alternatives, is there still some basic stuff I can do?

[Evan]

Can you open the keyboard up? I think you should check to see if there are any signs of damage to the PCB.

[ghostdawg187]

That is what I can see:

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20190412_163556.jpg (2.52 MiB) Viewed 2350 times

I should look for corrosion or some "rusty" spots, right? But I doubt that there exist any, but I do not have any knowledge.

[cli]

Try some silica gel - cat litter
https://www.action.com/nl-nl/p/natura-kattenbakkorrels-

Put the stuff in a big plastic box with your keyboard above. Say a little prayer and close the box. Let it stay for a day.

[ghostdawg187]

Try some silica gel - cat litter
https://www.action.com/nl-nl/p/natura-kattenbakkorrels-

Put the stuff in a big plastic box with your keyboard above. Say a little prayer and close the box. Let it stay for a day.

Thank you for your advice. I have filled it up with rice instead, wrapped it up with some plastic and put in a box and send some prayer to the God of vintage mechanical keyboards. We will see if I have not caused too much damage already, by plugging it in too early. But all this is just a guess, that my cleaning procedure caused the damage. Maybe it had some internal errors before.

Otherwise I would donate the board to someone, who would like to desolder the switches or might use it for other projects.

[Evan]

Try some silica gel - cat litter
https://www.action.com/nl-nl/p/natura-kattenbakkorrels-

Put the stuff in a big plastic box with your keyboard above. Say a little prayer and close the box. Let it stay for a day.

Thank you for your advice. I have filled it up with rice instead, wrapped it up with some plastic and put in a box and send some prayer to the God of vintage mechanical keyboards. We will see if I have not caused too much damage already, by plugging it in too early. But all this is just a guess, that my cleaning procedure caused the damage. Maybe it had some internal errors before.

Otherwise I would donate the board to someone, who would like to desolder the switches or might use it for other projects.

I would not recommend using rice as it is actually not a very good desiccant.

[abrahamstechnology]

I know everyone says this, but replace the electrolytic capacitors. Often the first thing to fail.

[GigiN]

Hi,
Does your OS recognize the keyboard when you plugged it in?
If so, maybe there is hope. Just don't use it for about a week at least and keep it in a dry and well ventilated place.

[ghostdawg187]

You won't believe it or not, but this thing is working again. My wife convinced me to boot windows on her laptop, since I have Ubuntu running. Just yesterday evening I have tried to get it back to life under ubuntu and nothing happened. Today under windows the same procedure, after connecting the keyboard with my laptop by Soarer's converter all the 3 leds flashed up and then nothing happens. But after 2 seconds the numlock led starts to flicker and even will stay on.

Just yesterday I have won an auction on ebay, where I have purchased another keyboard with 2nd gen SMK clicky switches, but this time in MX mount, because I really like these switches. As chyrosran has said in one of his videos about the best clicky switches, these switches will let you enjoy a kind of relaxed typing style.

I am not quite sure what kind of problems this keyboard has and I will see if it will stay in this condition but maybe I will sell this or the other one on deskthority

At least please enjoy my Datacomp DFK 192 now in a cleaned state....and even working

20190415_112953.jpg (1.8 MiB) Viewed 2164 times

Still I want to learn more about these beige 2nd gen. SMK clicky switches with ALPS mount.

PS: Thank you all for me giving me some advice how to reanimate this keyboard.

PPS: Now here is the real deal: Most of my external devices are connected with an external USB hub. Now I have plugged the keyboard into this hub. The result is, that it is dead and does not react to any keypress. Then I have connected the keyboard directly with my laptop, it still shows no signal. Then I go to my wife's laptop, running ubuntu as well, and plug it in there, the keyboard is recognized again. After this I turn back to my laptop and everything works fine again.

What kind of strange behaviour is this? Ever heard of something like this???