P.s. - tried the hair dryer trick recommended to "caloren" (this forum 539428-whirlpool-dishwasher-control-panel-control-board) last November. No apparent change, same buttons continued to work/not work. Also, a year or so back a button cover fell off the sanitize rinse button (one of the three "options" controls cluster) and I glued it back on (maybe Superglue - hard & inflexible - better suggestions?). Now the cover is off again and this button responds with a light too. All other controls, including "cancel" and "start" only light during the reboot cycle.

Again, what I'd like to know is whether to buy a control board (<$50) and try repair or is it pretty clear it needs the whole console assembly (~ $150 and a toss up for replacement of dishwasher).

Tried to test the console buttons and it doesn't seem right. NONE of the buttons give continuity. I don't understand why anything could fail like this rather than having some work and some not. I did the following:

- Disconnected the ribbon cable from the control board (also disconnected board and removed it - see later.) Removed latch assy to allow the console to be taken out of the door.

- With console on a table, the ribbon cable is sticking out to the right lying bottom side up. This is a 14 pin connector, as I look at it P1 is at the top, P14 at the bottom (matching vs two marked pins on the board). Continuity tests use the small bare spots in mid-connector for the meter probes.

Polarity is checked vs the table (e.g. #4 pos & #11 neg for High temp wash, # 3 pos & #13 neg for Cancel). I also confirmed that my meter probes always make good contact by pushing the connector upside-down part way onto the (disconnected) board and checking continuity between bare test spots and the curved parts of the matching pins going down to the board surface. Resistance always went right to zero.

Also checked at the extremes of my meter ranges (200 ohm/2 megohm max) and saw no difference.

Whatup?

Not sure what you mean by in the lines but they are part of the keyboard.

The key diodes using polarity are not the LED's.
They are steering/blocking diodes perhaps the following will help.
As an example they allow a keypad to have 9 keys but only use 3 or 4 output lines. If they were not there you would need a common line and then a line for each key for a total of 10.

UTM ROBOCON Team 2011: Matrix Keypad

Keypad Scan Uses Few I/O Lines, Decoding Keypad Buttons, Scan to Decode Matrix of Keypad Switches

I cannot explain why you get 0 on all keys.
Have you tried reversing the meter leads to read the switches?
I know that there are meters out there that the black/negative meter lead actually is positive for voltage when used in resistance mode.

I am also stumped by this.
I have never seen a control panel where all the switches are bad but you have one.

Since your test shows that the control panel (keypad) is bad that is the part I would replace first.

Control panel or control board replacement is always a bit of a gamble on these units.

Note if you order it fromAppliancePartsPros they will let you return it if it does not fix the problem.
Please see their return policy.