Yesterday I decided that my heavily-used clicky mechanical keyboard (a Das Keyboard 4) had accumulated far too much grime, and it was time to take the risk of cleaning it. In the past, every time I’ve tried cleaning a keyboard, it has never worked right afterwards. I’m a software guy, not a hardware guy. I found the keys quite easy to pry off. A light amount of leverage with a small screwdriver was helpful when space was tight, but once I’d cleared sufficient room around a key, I could pull it off just with my fingers. Even the wider keys were not hard. I found some warnings online against removing these, because of the trickiness of their extra stabilization mechanisms. But these were actually quite simple: a steel spring with its ends poked through two tiny brackets (removable, but best left in place) at each end of the key. It took a bit of pressure with the screwdriver to bend one end of the spring far enough to take it out of the hole, but it snapped immediately back to its original shape after I had taken the key out, so I saw no problem putting things back afterwards. The space bar was even simpler: just two additional support posts at the ends, in addition to the usual post (common to all the keys) that held the actual switch in the middle. After I had got all the keys off, the grime on the keyboard itself was a wonder to behold (I’ll spare you the details). I tried to use a bunched-up corner of a wet cloth, and even a vacuum cleaner with the smallest nozzle (again heeding warnings online against compressed air), and I was able to remove maybe half the accumulation of deposits, not much more. I figured that was good enough. Of course, in the process, I likely got some water into two slots that were exposed after I removed the keys. There was a recommendation online to leave things to dry for at least 6 hours. Call me impatient; I left it for just 5. Afterwards, I plugged it in, without the key caps, and tried a few keys, and was gratified to find they still worked. After that, I put back all the keys, now nice and clean and dry. Even the ones with those extra springs went back with only a slight amount of fiddling to re-engage with those brackets on the keys. And afterwards, the keyboard still worked. I left it plugged in, and went to do something else. Half an hour later, I came back to my computer ... and the keyboard was dead. Not a single response from any key. Put it back in the heater cupboard and left it overnight. No change this morning: still dead. So I feel very sad. I thought I had broken my keyboard jinx. But it’s currently zero for three. I have some other keyboards, of course, including a colourful oddity I bought from Dick Smith (whose layout leaves out the right-hand super/windows key), and a Kensington “washable” (dare I risk it?), with the pipe/backslash key in a different position. But I had grown accustomed to the volume control knob and other niceties of the Das Keyboard. Looking back through my records, I was surprised to discover I had bought it about ten years ago, from Mighty Ape. So I suppose it’s had a good run. But it seems nobody in NZ sells the things any more. So currently I mourn, and I also look for alternatives ...