First post, by Cabernut
So I have this Compaq Portable - 8088 with two floppy drives and a ram upgrade board. I found it at a thrift shop years ago for $20. It used to work until the keyboard foamies disintegrated. So I went on ebay and bought replacements(see picture).
I went through the long process of replacing them, and while doing that I remember that I could type on the bare board with my fingertips. Anyway, upon reassembly I noticed that my repair didn't work at all. In fact, nothing worked. I was getting error 301
So what happened? I checked the voltage regulator on the keyboard circuit board, and they were 12v on the input and 5v on the output. So that appears fine. There does appear to be a tiny amount of corrosion on some of the bare traces. But that might not explain how it was working before my failed repair.
What could it be? Anything else I can check? Or, is there a way I can temporarily patch in an AT keyboard connector? I really would like to tinker with(coding and games) this computer more, perhaps find a hard drive for it and run 8088 Domination on it just once.