Apple Newton Keyboard Fixed

I love a happy ending. I now have a working keyboard. Ages ago I bought some electric paint, and it worked a treat. I just had to scrape off an insulating layer and then spread the paint all over the track to restore the connection and make a fix.

A smoking gun if ever I saw one. You can see the gap in the top track of the membrane at the bottom of the picture. I thought the green covering the ribbon cable was another layer of tape stuck onto the back of the keyboard membrane, but actually it is a layer of paint. So I scraped it off around the break and then clarted the whole thing in conductive paint. And it fixed the problem. The hardest part was getting the keyboard mechanism back in the case. That took two goes.

Many thanks to the folks behind this site, which told me how to take the keyboard to bits.

Apple Newton Keyboard Fun

How was your day?

I got a keyboard for my Apple Newton. It was cheap because the shift keys don’t work. So it’s little letters all the way. Both shift keys have failed, which makes me think it is a broken track somewhere.

After a ton of tests and complete disassembly I think I’ve found the fault. I’ve found a tiny gap in one track. I just hope my conductive paint hasn’t gone solid.

Achievement Unlocked - Apple Newton

I’ve always fancied owning an Apple Newton. I remember when they were released and I couldn’t afford one. Now it turns out that you can pick them up quite cheaply.

My “new to me” Newton arrived last week. It works, even the display lights up. It has a nasty scratch on the screen but this doesn’t seem to stop it from working. I’m missing the pen though, so I’m scouring the net for a replacement.

The biggest problem is that the internal clock just can’t handle 2026. It’s as if the Apple engineers didn’t expect people to still be using them 33 years after they were made. Apparently the trick is to tell the machine it is 1998, then the days line up.

The machine has a serial port, so I’m going to have a go at making it talk to a PICO and see if we can get data in and out of it. Such fun.