Re: Voyager Keys Message #4 Posted by Randy on 19 Oct 2004, 11:36 p.m., in response to message #3 by joebob
Voyagers and 41's have VERY good keyboards. Wear and dirt are the two factors that you must be concerned with. If it's been pounded on for 20 years, it's tired and needs a rest. If you count on your calculator, avoid those no matter how much a bargain they may seem . There are lots of nice Voyagers out there, it's worth the extra money to get a low usage unit. Not necessarily mint, just low use. Keyboards tell the tale.
There are several things that I have seen that go wrong with Voyager and 41 keyboards (similar design) in the order of observation:
1) LOTS of dirt inside the calculator which works it way inside the workings of the key snap disc chamber. The keys don't click at all and have little physical travel. This can usually be cleaned. This is about the only easy fix, the others below require major surgery.
2) The rubber sheet between the snap discs and the keys gets holes worn through the rubber from the key pin that pushes on the snap disk. This results in keys that are lower than surrounding key. They otherwise work okay, they just don't have the correct or same physical travel as the others. This is most common on the right hand side of the keyboard, i.e. the heaviest use keys (0 and . seem to go first).
3) The keytop itself can break at the bottom hinge half of the key, this results in a loose, wobbling keytop which reminds me of a loose tooth in its socket. The key has its normal click but the keytop is lower than normal and is hard to press since the force is not directed due to the loss of the hinge point.
4) The snap disk fractures. Pretty rare actually, the key is flat and has no click, similar to #1. Sometimes you'll hear a weird cricket like click when pressed.
A good indication of heavy use is if the sides of the keys are worn with shiny and rounded edges. If the lower blue shift legend is missing or worn, it has seen a LOT of use as well.
|