Партнер-01.01 (Partner): Part 3 (Keyboard refurbish)
14The keyboard of this 8080-clone uses a magnet and a reed switch in each mechanism. The keycap text is a bit of paper underneath a clear bit of plastic.
So first order of business - removing all the keycaps and clear plastic squares and giving them a wash.
The switches themselves would sometimes get stuck, so I've tried lubricating each one with some silicone-based lubricant.
Finally, I replaced the original power on LED with a blue one, and the Latin character LED with a green one (toggled by the [ЛАТ] key ... off = Cyrillic, on = Latin).
I managed to figure out how to exit to basic ... [B] then [ВК].
Although ... backspace still alludes me!
Next video - replacing the temporary 6-pin DIN socket I'm using for composite video output with a 5-pin DIN wired same as for Commodore VIC-20, trying to boost the quality of the video (emitter follower?), and trying to load some software.
Documentation can be found here:
https://archive.org/details/partner-01-01-documentation
Software, ROMs, etc. can be found here:
https://github.com/alemorf/retro_computers/tree/master/Partner_01_01