Chasing a ghost key for 6 hours, turned out to be a bent pin

Spent a whole Saturday fighting a keyboard where the 'R' key would double-register every few presses. I swapped switches, reflowed the socket, even replaced the whole PCB top plate before I looked at the actual pin with a magnifier. Turns out one pin had a microscopic bend from when I clipped it during install, took about 2 minutes to straighten with tweezers. Has anyone else wasted a full session on something that dumb, or is it just me in Phoenix?

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anthonykim10d ago

The magnifier part is what gets me, six hours in and I still would have assumed it was the socket. Did you happen to check the bent pin against a datasheet for the exact switch type, or was it just obvious once you saw it? I had a similar issue with a stabilizer wire once, but that only cost me an afternoon.