Here's a couple of snaps I took of the Amiga 500 as I was cleaning out the keyboard. I was surprised that it was not very dusty looking inside, but the keyboard was filthy as hell!
- Here's the A500's keyboard before I got started pulling all the keycaps off.
(If you're curious as to why two keys look cleaner than the rest on this picture, it was because I was already testing out cleaning the keycaps in warm water and dish soap and seeing what a difference it made. Yes, I dried those keys thoroughly before reattaching them!
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Here's the Kickstart ROM chip already in the Amiga:
- The Kickstart ROM; it's 2.04. What's that wire for?
And the board revision:
- It's a Rev. 5 board in there!
I cleaned the keyboard by filling a large tupperware with warm water and dish soap, then pulling off all the keycaps and placing them in the soapy water. Using a gentle dish sponge (no scouring pads at all) and my fingers, I cleaned all of the dirt and grime accumulation from every single key, changing the water a couple of times to throw out all the dirty water. Once the keys finally came out clean and not releasing any further dirt into the water, I rinsed off all of the excess soap with cool water, then spread the keys onto a towel to allow excess water to drip out. I dried each and every key by hand with a paper towel before reattaching them back to the keyboard.
As for the keyboard itself, I took 50% isopropyl alcohol, dabbed a lint-free cotton swab into it, and used that to gently go between keys, cleaning out any dirt and grime I could get. Once I was satisfied that no more dirt was being lifted off, I reattached each keycap in their proper places. I still need to maybe retr0bright the A500 case itself, but at least for now the keyboard looks much, much nicer than it did before.