Hi, I'm a complete neophyte and I was hoping to get some advice/assistance from those of you who know what you're doing. Any help would be truly appreciated.

The other day, I woke up in the middle of the night and decided I needed a typewriter -- you know, a distractionless writing tool that might actually allow me to complete work. After some preliminary searches, I decided these $600 plus jobs advertised were way more than I wanted to pay, but I'd check the local craigslist just in case. Within the first couple of results was (what I discovered to be) a really pristine condition Olympia SM4 for $75 -- exactly! After doing every bit of research I could on the unit, I called the guy up and gave it a test-run. It was, indeed, as clean as the photos and every mechanical device appeared to function as it could. For $75, I took it home without much thought.

Get back to the house and the ribbon is understandably almost completely dried out, making for some difficult testing. However, it still revealed a problem: the whole keyboard will only type in capital letters (and secondary characters).

Oh, the caps lock button is on, right? Well, no it's not. Tried it both ways -- same results. Anyway, trying to track down a new ribbon or two locally to do some more testing, but I'm at a bit of a loss. I've been through a manual posted online and searched every forum I could in search of a solution, but I'm could not find anything that resembles my problem. Am I missing something easy? Simple adjustment? Or do I need to find a repair guy?

I suppose I also noticed some of the letters can get stuck on each other if I type too quickly, but I think this may have more to do with having typed on computer keyboards my entire life.

Again, thanks in advance.