ED#89 : My Saitek Eclipse Goes Kamikaze!

It was just another day when I left my PC running overnight to download files while I hit the AC (air-conditioner) and went to bed. However, when I took a look at the PC the next morning, I realized that a few keys on my Saitek Eclipse keyboard were not functioning. How odd!

I had never dismantled a keyboard before. Nevertheless, I went ahead and took it apart. No beatles were found stuck under the keys and the silicone layer looked fine. Gently peeling off the silicone layer revealed the "sensor" layer. Everything looked fine at first sight, but when I took a closer look...

I saw a burn mark on the sensor sheet! There are actually 3 layers of these plastic sensor sheets. The burn mark was on the lowest of the three layers.

When I lefted up all 3 plastic sensor sheets, I could clearly see the suspect. It was one of the blue LED lights along the edges of the keyboard. Apparently, it overheated and melted the plastic sensor layer closest to it. This disrupted the integrity of the thin, frail circuit lines which happened to lie over the affected LED light.

All because of that LED light, the Dash/Underscore key, the Equal/Plus key, the F9 to F12 keys, the PrtScrn key, the Scroll Lock key, the Pause/Break key, the Insert and Delete keys, the Home key, the Page Up and Page Down keys, the End key, the numeric 7, 8, and 9 keys, the NumPlus key, the Volume Up and Volume Down keys as well as the Right Click key are all dead. That's a total of 22 keys.

Sadly, although I still have the receipt and the original box, its warranty period is over since it's about 19-months old. So, the moral of this story is "You should never leave a keyboard with LEDs (like this Saitek Eclipse) running non-stop".

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