That keyboard sure is an odd duck.

It has programmable keys which is why I wanted it

Yeah, it sure has quite a few tricks up it's sleeve. That style of directional keypad has been around for quite some time (although without diagonal buttons). I remember examples from the 286 era.

So, what's the plan? MAME/Street Fighter 2 macros?

Having issues getting it to work, the keys don't respond. Tried cleaning the contacts and using electrical tape to hold the circuit paper in place. Might just give up and go for a decent used PS2 beige keyboard. Suggestions welcome maybe the IBM 8923

Holy necro thread bump! Did you ever get this sorted, or did you give up like your final post suggests? I have 2 of these Anykey keyboards here and both have the exact same problem, a load of unresponsive keys on both. I feel like it's because I'm not quite lining the contacts up on the sheet to the PCB but it's so hard to tell... it could be that the mylar sheets on both happen to be borked and I'll never be able to repair them, but it's grating at me that I have two of these awesome keyboards that I feel like I should be able to get working.

I have another type of gateway 2k keyboard from the mid 90s with a similar design (rubber dome, flex circuit, same manufacturer but the layout is a conventional keyboard layout). Every once in awhile several of the keys including the down directional arrow will stop working and the quick fix is to press down on the plastic keyboard top shell roughly in the vicinity of where the connector on the flex circuit connects to the cable (in my case, this is around the top of the numeric keypad and I press down firmly on the casing with a finger underneath the page down key and maybe also and the / key (it's a similar connection as the anykey, I think the internal connection partially relies on a piece of foam to sandwich the flex circuit connector to the connector on the cable and the foam may break down from age). It's also helped me with this issue to not use the kickstand legs of the keyboard, so it is flatter on the desk.
Alternatively, I've had good luck tightening the screws in the screw posts near that area of the keyboard, like even if I thought they were already tight, just tightening them slightly more, and having that make things work for a good while. Eventually the non responding keys issue comes back but when either pressing on the keyboard shell or tightening a case screw fixes things for weeks at a time, I can live with it. Id definitely focus on that connection point if looking to do a repair and the flex circuit looks reasonable.

I've taken mine apart before but nothing really looks odd or like it could be easily improved to get a better connection than it's already getting. These are cheap quality keyboards with cheap components and I only use mine so I have a matching logo/design with my gateway 2k PC 😂

dukeofurl wrote on 2025-05-07, 20:10:

I have another type of gateway 2k keyboard from the mid 90s with a similar design (rubber dome, flex circuit, same manufacturer but the layout is a conventional keyboard layout). Every once in awhile several of the keys including the down directional arrow will stop working and the quick fix is to press down on the plastic keyboard top shell roughly in the vicinity of where the connector on the flex circuit connects to the cable (in my case, this is around the top of the numeric keypad and I press down firmly on the casing with a finger underneath the page down key and maybe also and the / key (it's a similar connection as the anykey, I think the internal connection partially relies on a piece of foam to sandwich the flex circuit connector to the connector on the cable and the foam may break down from age). It's also helped me with this issue to not use the kickstand legs of the keyboard, so it is flatter on the desk.
Alternatively, I've had good luck tightening the screws in the screw posts near that area of the keyboard, like even if I thought they were already tight, just tightening them slightly more, and having that make things work for a good while. Eventually the non responding keys issue comes back but when either pressing on the keyboard shell or tightening a case screw fixes things for weeks at a time, I can live with it. Id definitely focus on that connection point if looking to do a repair and the flex circuit looks reasonable.

I've taken mine apart before but nothing really looks odd or like it could be easily improved to get a better connection than it's already getting. These are cheap quality keyboards with cheap components and I only use mine so I have a matching logo/design with my gateway 2k PC 😂

You and a couple of other folks elsewhere all mentioned the issue of that piece of foam breaking down over time and needing something else to apply pressure, so I folded up a sheet of soft tissue paper, laid it over the top of that connector, reassembled the keyboard and thought "well this sure as shit isn't going to fix it"... and lo and behold, every single key now works perfectly 😂😂 amazing stuff, I now have 2 perfectly working Anykey keyboards, one to pair with my P5-90 and one for storage 😀 Thank you, hopefully this post may help other Gateway 2000 fans in the future!

Awesome! Maybe I'll try the tissue paper trick in the future.

I picked up some of my gateway stuff from a gateway 2000 collector and he had multiple "broken" anykey keyboards in his parts bin. Hope people give this a shot as I think it may not be that uncommon to have non responsive keys on these keyboards now that they are going on three decades old.