Thinkpads Forum

Hi... A right cursor key stopped working on one of my ultranav keyboards. The issue is not mechanical - I disassembled the key, removing the cup, but the key still failed to respond.

1. If anyone has disassembled the backplate and repaired such a key, I would greatly appreciate any advice.

2. I'd gladly purchase the replacement keyboard module if someone can point me in the right direction or has one.

3. Considering that it is much easier to find a similar laptop keyboard module, that differs in the presence of the power key and lack of golden mounting points (see the picture on the link at the bottom), would it be feasible to get one of those parts, break my module and find way to put the mounting point on the back of the laptop keyboard?

4. If there are any other ideas, please do share.

Thank you.


https://ibb.co/XDy7C8y

i have pictures and models here
viewtopic.php?p=832872#p832872

can you check the keyboard on another computer to be sure it is not a driver issue?

Thank you for your reply.

It's not a driver issue. That particular keyboard has worked well for 6+ years since I had it and then just that one arrow key stopped working. I have disassembled it, removing the cup, and there is no reaction when I press it. Everything else works fine.

Whatever the problem is, it is below the black sheet on your image https://abload.de/image.php?img=img_01768ijfs.jpg

There are at least 2 kinds of keyboards, I suspect you have the ''real ibm'' so on ebay you have to look for those, i think the way to see them is that their date is around 2007

THe chinese copy is a tiny step closer to a NMB, and they come in boxes with even CDs... They use the driver of the 8855 and there is no tpmiddle working witht he ''usual thinkpad scroll''.

The two do not use the same drivers, so you have to know what scrolling type you want, or rather, if you want the thinkpad scroll+middle click with tpmiddle, then you need the ''real ibm'' which uses the synaptic driver.

Like I say in my posts, there is a bug with fast scrolling in notepad++, so you have to replace the buggy driver with a nice driver, but you lose the fast scrolling in texts.

Both kinds of keyboards are good with the generic scrolling by MS.

If you want something fancy, you can keep the plastic bezel of this dead keyboard and put a keyboard of the x200/1, then you connect it with https://hackaday.com/2018/12/04/teensy- ... -keyboard/
it will have the generic scrolling since it will be a generic keyboard over USB.
THe 2 keyboard have almost the same size and the one of the x200/1 fits almost perfectly.

Or you can buy the sk8855 if you find it. Or the newer versions with BT. Or the mechanical version of the 8845 by a private chinese guy https://dream.tex-design.com.tw/product ... 9883648090

All my trackpoint keyboards are the original IBM ultranav and the Lenovo 7-row travel keyboards.

I'm not interested in experimenting with the Chinese copy since I rely on full functionality of the original - and I'm vary of unknown trackpoints.

Even before posting I bought a used IBM ultranav without numpad that I will use for fixing this keyboard and a friend's, but what I'm interested in is either fixing the key itself or hearing from someone who replaced the keyboard module in the IBM ultranav with a laptop keyboard module like T61's.