Folks, I wanted to pass on a problem I was experiencing with my PSR-500 over the past 24 hours. It is resolved now, thank goodness.
Explanation: A few days ago I started noticing that when pressing the backlight button, the light would take a few button presses before illuminating. I figured, no problem, the backlight might be going out. However, yesterday afternoon the situation worsened as my backlight would not illuminate while pressing the key at all, but would light up when I pressed any other key. The situation only got worse. As I turned the scanner on and off (replacing power sources from different battery packs to a wall-wart also) the scanner would show the boot up screen then go straight into the "Prog>Glob>Light" menu. Any key I pressed would not function (including soft keys) but would illuminate the backlight (or turn it off). A few times I was able to start the scanner normally by holding "Pgm" during startup. I was able to load another win500 program from the computer. But all these would start in the the backlight menu also.
Resolution: On the advice of another member, I disassembled the unit to check on the keypad (I've disassembled this thing plenty of times to fix other issues). Once removed I could see that the metal backing on the rear of the keypad (seen below in picture 1) was flaking off on the most used buttons. I could also see on the PCB board where the keys would make contact, that a small flake was centered on the "light" key making contact with the twist (as you can see "flake-less" in picture 2). This small flake was causing a continuous connection to be made to the light key (and was causing all the above associated problems). I promptly removed the flake with some high pressure air, and cleaned the other flakes off the PCB board. I then tried to gently remove the flakings off the back off the keypad. After reassembling and turning back on, the scanner is working perfectly. Might be time to order a new keypad though.
Explanation: A few days ago I started noticing that when pressing the backlight button, the light would take a few button presses before illuminating. I figured, no problem, the backlight might be going out. However, yesterday afternoon the situation worsened as my backlight would not illuminate while pressing the key at all, but would light up when I pressed any other key. The situation only got worse. As I turned the scanner on and off (replacing power sources from different battery packs to a wall-wart also) the scanner would show the boot up screen then go straight into the "Prog>Glob>Light" menu. Any key I pressed would not function (including soft keys) but would illuminate the backlight (or turn it off). A few times I was able to start the scanner normally by holding "Pgm" during startup. I was able to load another win500 program from the computer. But all these would start in the the backlight menu also.
Resolution: On the advice of another member, I disassembled the unit to check on the keypad (I've disassembled this thing plenty of times to fix other issues). Once removed I could see that the metal backing on the rear of the keypad (seen below in picture 1) was flaking off on the most used buttons. I could also see on the PCB board where the keys would make contact, that a small flake was centered on the "light" key making contact with the twist (as you can see "flake-less" in picture 2). This small flake was causing a continuous connection to be made to the light key (and was causing all the above associated problems). I promptly removed the flake with some high pressure air, and cleaned the other flakes off the PCB board. I then tried to gently remove the flakings off the back off the keypad. After reassembling and turning back on, the scanner is working perfectly. Might be time to order a new keypad though.
