[Duo2400] New life for your Duo

[Jani Tiainen]

> Some time ago I got a Duo 270c (I am trying to complete a Duo collection;
> currently I have a 210, 230, 270c and coming soon a 280c and
> 2300c). It was
> in good shape except for the top cover (has a burn mark)

You can get rid of that burnmark easily by painting cover with a new, maybe
more intuitive color than that gray.

Just use a some fine grained sandpaper, (or as I did), first carefully use
sharp knife (I used surgeon knife) to remove those rised stripes and then
smoothed with sandpaper. And finally a new paint on it.

I found that best paint was a normal aerosol-carpaint (with metallic touch
of course.. =) They're cheap and they're very durable. I think I used
something like 7 layers, but outcome was pretty. I also painted those soft
side bumpers (or whatever they are for) with same paint.

> So yesterday I decided to give it a try and clean the keyboard. It is easy
> to dismantle (hint: lift the keycaps by its rear side) and all the
> procedure took about one hour (BTW, once there, carefully clean trackball
> assembly). I did a very careful cleaning, using zero-residue contact
> cleaner and a soft cloth. I went one by one all the half-moon shaped
> contacts in the flexible circuits and also each conductive ring in the
> rubber sheet. Now all keys work fine and, finally, can use the 270c to do
> some productive work (keep a log of my electronics repair work)

If those contacts are in very bad shape, you can try following:

first clean up with some (non-dissolvent) cleaner, then crafully scrape
contact with knife etc. sharp tool (don't break contacts) and then paint
contacts with silver electronics paint (paint that contains real silver
particles, it's pretty expensive but works pretty well).

Same paint can be used to repair eg. defective display cable.