Hey Cheffo,
Thanks for the response. I really am new to the entire wiki concept, but it sure looks cool. I've been involved with the arcade industry since I was a kid, so I have a lot of information that I'm more than happy to share. To be honest, the wiki looks confusing to me, I wouldn't even know where to begin if I were to add non-ramcontrols information. As a member of BYOAC, am I automatically given the ability to add information to the wiki or do I need to ask someone for that access? Or perhaps I can forward information to the proper people and they can add it? I guess I just don't understand how it works, exactly.
If anyone wants to pick my brain, let me know. I used to spend a LOT of time at Atari when I was a kid, plus I've pretty much broken down and studied every Atari controller imaginable. Then, of course, is the insane amount of time I spent working on arcade repair. :-) The list goes on. I like the whole wiki idea as I understand it, so I hope I can be of help.
David Adams
RAM Controls
Yes, you should be able to use your BYOAC user info to login to edit the wiki.
And, yes, lots of it looks confusing to me as well, although I'm not sure how to better organize it -- and I typically spend all of my time on the
Restoration page anyway, which is pretty much just a collection of links from my book marks with some slight degree of organization applied.
I've wanted to write up some actual articles about restoration, but have so far been content to link to articles written by others.
My attempt at a "specific parts" database is my first attempt to do something original in the wiki (because, while I have a great memory, I still spend hours scanning vendor sites looking for that specific chip, silly label or oddball bit) and I just don't know enough about wikis technically yet to make it work the way I want it to (to the point where I'm thinking about just assembling a database, writing a quick set of scripts with a search engine and hosting it myself ... which maybe I should do as a first cut).
One of Xiaou2's better ideas was to try and assemble a database of detailed controller information because, in many cases, we're losing those more rapidly and permanently than game code. I think I provided some negative feedback at the time (was a while ago), but the more I think about it, it would be a real shame to lose that information and there are people, both restoration and DIY folks who could make good use of it.
I only just noticed that you weren't listed in the
Vendors portion of the wiki. I was a bit surprised, but then again, I typically only check vendors entries after my most recent order to them and only then, if they are missing, add them in.
I have added you and set up a
RAM Controls page with some text I pulled from your site -- perhaps the best place to start getting your feet wet is to tune that page as you see fit.
Huge thanks for your interest -- it may take other folks a while to chime in here as this part of the board isn't frequented much (witness the number of responses I got to my last suggestion ... zero).