Thinkpads Forum

I had a slight amount of liquid splash on my T60P last week. The keyboard (Chicony FRU: 39T7178) itself seemed to mostly work except for the escape and spacebar keys. I decided to give it a good cleaning as it was pretty dirty after years of use.

I removed the ribbon cable that attaches to the the actual keyboard and noticed an obvious wear on the gold contacts for this connection. This part is held in place simply by the pressure of a small metal piece. I'm assuming the contacts are/were gold at one point and not tin? This "wear" is quite alarming since when I reassembled the keyboard doesn't work at all anymore

Can anyone confirm that the contacts on the keyboard for this or similar Thinkpad keyboards are supposed to be gold like the second picture I posted?

I must note that the connector has never been removed before so this "wear" is quite surprising.

Connection for ribbon cable on actual keyboard


Ribbon that attaches to keyboard then back to motherboard

I have had probably over 100 such keyboards go through my hands over the years.
I have NEVER removed that cable, but could well imagine corrosion from a spill.
I doubt that the contacts are/were goldplated, more likely they are just tinplated.

More likely you damaged something removing this cable or just didn't put it back correctly.

I have had quite a few of these keyboards (though probably not as many as RealBlackStuff), and never felt the need to remove the cable. Nor have I ever seen one that stopped working or exhibited even the most minor issue due to a problem with that cable...

Took the cable off a x301 keyboard once - never worked again no matter how many times it was carefully reinstalled.

You can't tell but in that first photo showing the connector; that is actually two pieces of plastic overlapping each other.

The top piece of plastic has gold contacts that fit the top of the ribbon connector and the bottom piece has contacts that fit the bottom of the ribbon. You need to sandwich the ribbon between these two pieces. I guess this is the solution that was used when you don't attach a physical connector.

Anyhow, the keyboard is back to it initial semi-working state.

I can also confirm that the contacts are definitely gold and not tin plated.

I would just replace the keyboard. I usually get $10-20 for a good used one so it hardly seems worth the effort of taking one apart unless it's just to replace a keycap or a minor cleaning. If you had an unusual layout then it might be worth the effort, but a T60 series with US layout is a very common part so unless you're enjoying this endeavor, I'd just replace it.