RE: Remanufacturing FAQ

G'day folks,

I agree with Mark that a FAQ is quite static. That's why only the most
common and typical techniques are documented in it. The idea is that no
matter what happens, this information will always be useful. Also as Dave
said, a FAQ does serve a central permanent repository.

When Doug and I attempted the Conversion FAQ, we had the same concern that
Mark voiced. Each game's hardware was too unique. Remember back then,
JAMMA wasn't as prevalent as today. The Conversion FAQ ended up showing
people how to identify games that were similar enough to be a candidate for
conversion. Then using the top 10 games in VAPS at the time, we showed that
_MOST_ of these popular games were similar enough to other games in the top
10 so that you'd only need three cabinets!

I'd suggest a similar format for any Remanufacturing/Restoration FAQ. Use a
single game (like Robotron?) to show the techniques that could be applied to
_MOST_ cabinets with commonly available materials. The WWW sites will
document the more unique cases.

Focussing a group for a FAQ starts with your experts...finding one willing
to write 10 or 20 pages for a first draft of a FAQ is difficult. Most
people are too busy going on to new projects to spend the horrendous amount
of time necessary to write/review a good FAQ. Another rule of thumb for
groups is limiting the size...any more than 4 or 5 people will slow down the
project. When it comes to writing FAQs, you may be limited to only 3 people
or you may need a dictator who closes off issues/discussions. Alot of it
depends on the personalities involved.

                Steve Ozdemir
                sozdemir@att.com

ps - Whenever you do anything with a group of volunteers, make sure to weed
out the folks who are enthusiastic but probably won't have the staying power
to stick with the project for 6 months. Many times you'll take alot of time
away from the project to bring one of these enthusiastic people on board,
only to have them back out a month later. If this happens enough times, it
can bring a group project to a halt.

-----Original Message-----
From: Commander Dave [mailto:david@hiwaay.net]
Sent: Tuesday, September 07, 1999 11:58 AM
To: vectorlist@lists.cc.utexas.edu
Subject: Re: Remanufacturing FAQ

My final thoughts for today (at least until I get home at least <grin>) is
that I
agree with Mark that we have a lot of energy here, but no focus. Looks like
everyone has an individual view of what should be done. I don't have any
ideas on
how to fix that problem... How do you get a crowd of users to decide and
focus on
a specific project, not to mention assign tasks?

I always look to Steve to provide these "voice from the cave" answers,
knowing how
little he has to do and how bored he has been lately <grins to Steve>.

More of my random thoughts,
-Commander Dave

Mark Jenison wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I've just been skimming through this thread, and it isn't clear to me what
the
> scope of the FAQ that you are discussing is. Is it a Remanufacturing FAQ
as
> the title suggests (re-creating existing cabinets), how to make an arcade
> cabinet, or how to restore existing cabinets?
>
> As far as restoring existing cabinets, there's plenty of pages for that,
> obviously. If someone wants to do a restoration FAQ, I think it would be
best
> to specify how to deal with generic parts (controls, coin doors, monitors,
> marquees, flourescent lights, woodworking, etc), and maybe have an index
for
> special cases at the end (for unique cabinet stuff like sitdown spyhunter,
> discs of tron, etc).
>
> On www.enteract.com/~jenison/mars in the Feature Articles section I have
some
> restoration tips for most all the generic parts above which the document
can
> reference.
>
> However, since restoration is such a big topic, I would think a "living"
> document might be better. Maybe a web page which acted like a bulletin
board
> where people could post restoration ideas, pages, etc. The web owner
would be
> in charge of organizing topics, questions and answer into the most usable
form.
>
> If you're talking about a Re-manufacturing FAQ (how to make an existing
> cabinet), I think that's too specialized and would need a doc per game.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Mark Jenison E-mail address: jenison@cig.mot.com
> Cellular Infrastructure Group Motorola--Arlington Heights, IL
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Received on Tue Sep 7 14:49:30 1999