Membrane keyboard connector repair advice? (Osborne 1)

[Josh Dersch]

Steven Hirsch wrote:
> On Wed, 7 Jan 2009, Josh Dersch wrote:
>
>> Yet another small repair question --
>>
>> Picked up an Osborne 1 with a non-functional keyboard.  Upon opening 
>> it, I found that one of the plastic/membrane keyboard ribbon 
>> connectors had cracked partially through near where it plugs into the 
>> PCB.
>>
>> Since these ribbons are actually part of the membrane of the keyboard 
>> I can't just replace the cracked ribbon -- so the only option appears 
>> to be to re-cut the end of the ribbon cable and expose a bit of the 
>> conductive material. What's the recommended means to expose the 
>> conductive stripes at the end? I've tried gently scraping with the 
>> tip of an x-acto knife but it either does nothing or takes everything 
>> off the end :).
>
> Are you sure the ribbon is actually a "sandwich"?  My Tandy CoCos and 
> Atari 800XL units have a similar flex ribbon where the conductors are 
> on the top surface.  I've been able to simply cut them back and 
> reinsert the remainder.  (I initially went down the same path and 
> tried scraping them - with similar results <g>).
>
> Steve
>
It's not a sandwich, but there's definitely some sort of coating over 
the conductive stripes -- I get nothing out of my continuity tester by 
touching the probes on opposite ends of a given stripe.  Hmm.

Josh