Removing / rearranging key caps

iSKUNK! · **Posted:** Wed Nov 21, 2007 9:22 pm

I'm interested in purchasing a Lenovo C200 model laptop. I'm also a long-time user of the DVORAK keyboard layout, though not hard-core enough to touch-type.

I'd like to ask if there is a way to safely remove individual key caps from the keyboard, and replace them in a different arrangement.

Brief experimentation at a computer store (under the watchful eye of a salesperson) suggests that the key caps cannot be removed by gently prying upward, as other laptop keyboards allow, but I'm hoping that Lenovo just uses a different mechanism.

ryengineer · **Posted:** Thu Nov 22, 2007 5:37 am

Keys can be removed by gently prying upwards. As far as putting them in different arrangement is concerned, it is possible as long as the keys from the source to destination are equal in size and proportion, obviously you would need to remap them afterwards too.

iSKUNK! · **Posted:** Thu Nov 22, 2007 4:58 pm

Are you sure it's not the Thinkpad keyboard you're thinking of? The salesperson made the point that there is a difference in the key cap mounting mechanism between the Thinkpad- and Lenovo-branded laptop keyboards; that the former can be removed by prying up in the usual manner, but the latter worked in some other way that he did not know. That it might even be the case that the Lenovo's key caps cannot be removed at all (which would be a deal-breaker for me, hence my question here).

I did try to pull up a key cap from an N200. It went up about 1/8", and even after rocking it back and forth a bit, it would not budge. If "prying up" were the way, I believe it should have come off, and I feared that pulling it up any further would have damaged the key mechanism....

andyP · **Posted:** Fri Nov 23, 2007 2:26 am

FYI according to the HMM the keyboards for the C200 are manufactured by NMB and Chicony who also manufacture TP keyboards. I find it difficult to imagine they would use other manufacturing methods for 3000 series keyboards.
If the keys are difficult to remove; that speaks of quality to me.

iSKUNK! · **Posted:** Fri Nov 23, 2007 11:32 am

Well, the presence/absence of the trackpoint would be one major difference, so reasonably there could be others as well.

I forgot to mention, I'd earlier spoken with Lenovo/IBM's support techs, and they didn't have *any* information on removing key caps. They didn't go so far as to say the caps are permanently attached, but that at best it's something unobvious.

JaneL · **Posted:** Fri Nov 23, 2007 11:40 am

This isn't the same model, but you might try to contact this user and see if he was able to replace that one key. He at least will know how the keys are put on.

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=48954

iSKUNK! · **Posted:** Thu Nov 29, 2007 6:27 pm

I had an informative little chat with Matt. This was what he had to say:

Quote:

Keycaps can be removed by simply pulling them off. On most keyboards I've dealt with, there is very little danger of damaging the keycap when doing that. But, I have a reasonably strong impression that the keycaps on the Lenovo 300 laptop are significantly more delicate than most others. The little plastic tabs on the underside of the Lenovo keyscaps that hold the keycap onto its support bracket break really easily. So, if you were intending to replace them sometime, but broke some while removing them, later replacement wouldn't be possible. Also, if the caps you want to use instead of the originals also have delicate attachment tabs. they might break when you try to install them. Have you thought of keeping the original keys, and writing up a set of stickers to put over the original keys - you could write whatever symbols you wanted on those stickers.

The fragility of the key mechanism [when removing a keycap] is enough discouragement for me---this is no IBM Model M keyboard. (The day they build a buckling-spring keyboard into a Thinkpad, I'll be all over that.) The Lenovo line still has a lot to recommend it, however, and perhaps a ready-made set of key-stickers is a reasonable way of "rearranging" the keys. I've had bad experiences with stickers on top of keys (peeling, tackiness, etc.) but hope that these are of a better cut.

Thanks, everyone, for your help.

JaneL · **Posted:** Thu Nov 29, 2007 7:18 pm

Thanks for coming back and posting what you found out here!

atrus · **Posted:** Sat Dec 15, 2007 5:38 pm

I've got an N100 myself. I didn't have any trouble removing or replacing keys myself. Unfortunately, when I tried to put them back in a dvorak layout, I found some of the physical mounts for the keys are upside down relative to the others, so there's relatively little useful re-arrangement of keys possible.

iSKUNK! · **Posted:** Mon Dec 17, 2007 3:58 pm

Atrus, that's good to know. I also just now stumbled across this post, stating the same for a Thinkpad T30.

I was originally worried that some gratuitous design quirk would be a problem, and lo and behold, that manages to be the case after all....

oxygen14 · **Posted:** Sun Aug 10, 2008 6:39 am

How does one remap the keys in BIOS to avoid OS-dependant problems ? As I am living in France, the most annoying thing on computers is to hit the "A" key and sometimes see a "Q" on screen if the dirty magic remapping command had not been issued, which I have observed on all kinds of systems since the beginning (Amiga, Mac, MS-DOS PC in the 90's). Or maybe I should stick to US keyboards like when I used Sun and SGI workstations.
Are there any tools to disassemble BIOS, edit the scan code tables and write back the correct checksum ?

Removing / rearranging key caps

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