Broken keyboard and touchpad on P53

[wrybread]

I spilled some water on my P53's keyboard, ugh. I power off the laptop and turned it upside down and thought I got all the water out of the keybaord, was just a little that spilled. Opened it up and pulled the keyboard, didn't see any water. Left the keyboard upside down to drain in the sun. Thought I was clear so I reconnected the keyboard and it worked for awhile but then.... dead keyboard. And interestingly the also a dead touchpad. Laptop worked perfectly otherwise. I ordered a new keyboard from eBay, but it doesn't work either. So I'm worried I might have damaged the circuitry upstream?

This is my main work laptop so I ordered a replacement from eBay and transferred the HD from the old one, and I'm typing on it now, it works beautifully. But I'd sure like to make that old laptop work again. I'm currently using it with a wireless keyboard and external mouse, but it's just not the same experience.

Can anyone think of anything I might try to get the keyboard and touchpad working again? I quadruple confirmed that the ribbon cables are all connected properly.

[RealBlackStuff]

If you remove the keyboard, there's a whole load of stuff connected to the keyboard-bezel.
See HMM page 84.
Check those as well.