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Just got my first Model I!

WD-40 is fish oil. And, has been known to eat plastic. TV Tuner Cleaner or Stabilant-50 don't trap dust in the mechanism.

That's just from my experience as a field service tech.

Stabilant-50 is also good to spray on edge connectors for the Expansion ports and floppy drives.
 
I've been using DeoxIt for contact cleaning. I use a needle applicator bottle rather than the messy spray. A draftsman's electric eraser is also nice for burnishing non-gold-plated edge fingers.
 
Gold plugs or the equivalent...

Gold plugs or the equivalent...

You can still buy Gold Plugs from the manufacturer. I have the links somewhere. But, you'll have to bend the ends to meet the pads so you can solder them.

I was thinking that you could also use pin connectors and a standard 40-pin cable to connect the keyboard to the E/I. I don't know why Tandy didn't make those to begin with.

I always kept a pencil eraser handy to clean the connector once a month until I put gold plugs on.
 
I've been told that it's important to NOT use pink pencil eraser for cleaning contacts. Highly-abrasive ink erasers are also forbidden. The white kind of pencil eraser is ok.
 
Interesting stuff; I think I first saw a Model I in a Radio Shack store circa 1977. I seem to recall I was in tow with my Dad, who was probably filling out the extensive paperwork required by RS to buy batteries, and I started poking at the keyboard. The store clerk told me something like, "that's a very expensive machine and your father would be very upset with you if you broke it."

So that was that, until the next year when he bought me a Model I, Level 1.

Pete.
 
Al Hartman said:
You can still buy Gold Plugs from the manufacturer. I have the links somewhere. But, you'll have to bend the ends to meet the pads so you can solder them.

I was thinking that you could also use pin connectors and a standard 40-pin cable to connect the keyboard to the E/I. I don't know why Tandy didn't make those to begin with.

I always kept a pencil eraser handy to clean the connector once a month until I put gold plugs on.
Click to expand...

Digikey sells them, search for: EBCxxMMNN just replace the xx with the number of pins per side.

You'll have to bend them to make better contact.
 
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