Restoration Best Practice RE: Subject: Knowledge Base (was RE: Restoration technique [Was: Re: Bay Area: IBM 4341 and HP3000]

[Dave G4UGM]

I try and blog my restorations here:-

http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/blog.php?18268-g4ugm

but I often forget. Actually recording what you have done is really
important and is often forgotten or over looked. The last thing you want to
do when you wife drags you away from the home workshop is write up what you
have done mot it is really important.

I also try and change things in a reversible manner. If I replace capacitors
I keep and record where they came from. I don't suppose this will ever be of
interest to any one else, but it might be...

Dave
G4UGM



-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Marc
Verdiell
Sent: 16 January 2015 09:02
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: Subject: Knowledge Base (was RE: Restoration technique [Was: Re:
Bay Area: IBM 4341 and HP3000]

I am relatively new here but joining this mailing list has helped me almost
immediately. Thank you Jay and others for doing this and contributing a
professional grade infrastructure. The wiki is an idea, but an alternative
that I wish would exist is a repository for restoration logs. Something that
you could follow and comment on, and that allows attachment of slightly
richer media to posts (photos, docs) in the context of someone's specific
restoration project. You learn so much from these. I know people already do
it individually, but not in a centralized searchable place (you have to
chance upon them), and often in an annoying reverse chronology "blog" format
that's ill adapted for this usage. Or a museum style static website that
does not relate the problem solving path (including things that fail) that a
restoration is. In other "build oriented" groups I belong to, we do this
very successfully by encouraging individual build log threads in a Forum
format. That's in addition to a catch-all "string of consciousness" mailing
list like this one. Is that anything that could be considered? 
Marc


> Message: 21
> Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2015 14:42:34 -0600
> From: "Jay West" <jwest at classiccmp.org>
> To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'"
>    <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
> Subject: Knowledge Base (was RE: Restoration technique [Was: Re: Bay
>    Area: IBM 4341 and HP3000]
> Message-ID: <004a01d0303a$a11eefa0$e35ccee0$@classiccmp.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain;    charset="us-ascii"
> 
> So.. about this "knowledgebase" of restoration techniques.
> 
> Apparently new folks don't know and some older listmembers don't
remember...
> 
> We did start a "wiki" for people to post restoration tips, repair tips,
etc.
> This was done about 8 years ago. When I first brought up the idea 
> there was a lot of discussion on the list as to if it was a good idea 
> or not. Many people had very good thoughts as to why it would be 
> wonderful, and many other people had equally good thoughts as to why it
would not be wonderful.
> 
> In any case, I set it up. We found that there was an initial flurry of 
> posting, and then virtually nothing. Statistics showed it was not used 
> very much at all. There were a handful of issues as I recall (not my 
> implementation of it, but in the general idea of a 
> repair/troubleshooting/restoration "wiki"). I only remember one of 
> them at the moment... and that was that someone would post an article 
> without really having detailed expertise in that given area and then 
> someone that DID have expertise in that area would (for lack of a 
> better term) contramand that article or write a separate one with 
> conflicting info which made it hard for a novice to really sift 
> through the information. In short, everyone has an opinion and at 
> times the articles directly conflicted with another and someone seeking
knowledge wouldn't know who to believe.
> 
> That being said, if people really want to give this another try, I 
> would be happy to turn on the old classiccmp knowledge base (I'm 99% 
> sure it's stored but just not turned on), or I could easily have one 
> of my support staff dump a wiki installation to a folder there (under 
> classiccmp) and we could give it a try again. I'm all for it, but for 
> it to be successful - it has to be due to contribution/acceptance by 
> the membership at large. My proclivity at this point would be to 
> install a new wiki and then pull articles already posted in the old "wiki"
into it.
> 
> And yes, if it's to be in the classiccmp.org domain, I'd have to host 
> it. I have not yet seen a scenario where we'd be willing to point an 
> a-record off-site (but that's not to say some future situation might 
> get a different response).
> 
> Best,
> J