Hello, my name is Shelby and this is my Youtube channel Tech Tangents. But that isn’t what I want
to talk about today, because I’m launching something new that is completely separate
from that. I am starting an independently run, community driven, repair wiki called Caps Wiki and
I want your help with it. I’ll get to the name in a bit, but first, why am I doing this? It can be
difficult to find useful information on repairing devices because it can be spread around in
so many different places. Youtube videos, forums, mailing lists, and others that may not be indexed
by search engines like discord servers. I want to create a central place for this information
to be written and posted by anyone so it can be found and used by everyone. So I decided to
launch my own website. And yes, the XKCD standards comic should be put here. But unlike the other
services I mentioned, this website is meant to be maintained as a knowledge database rather than a
place for sharing project logs. I’m hoping this distinction shines through to make for a better
experience. This is an ambitious undertaking that I will need help with, so if this sounds like your
kind of thing, I hope you’ll stick through this video to see what this is all about.
Lets jump right into this and take a look at the website. First I want to let you know that while I
have been working on this for a number of weeks it is still under development and some things
may change. The home page serves as a portal for finding devices that have already been documented
and some general educational information for repairs. For now let's check out a device that
has been fully documented already, my 3DFX Voodoo 5 I did a repair on a few years ago.
On the right we have some basic information about the device with a picture.
In the main area of the page there is a general description of the device followed by the first
bit of information that is meant to help troubleshoot. In this case it mentions that
when there is no video that the capacitors near the power connector may be bad and includes an
image of what the area looks like. Then there is a solution which, as you might expect,
is to recap the card. Immediately after that there is a warning that the capacitors may be glued in
place to let you know they might be more difficult to remove than expected. After that is where we
get into the namesake of the wiki, the list of capacitors followed by some suitable replacements.
While my main goal for the website is to help people repair any electronic devices,
my personal focus is on vintage electronics. And especially in those the number one thing
that fails are capacitors. So I picked the name caps.wiki because they play such a large role in
repairs. (And also because the fix.wiki domain was like $600 a year so screw that). But let me make
it clear, I want anyone to document anything that would be helpful. Replacement tubes for
old radios, belt sizes for cassette players, battery mods for dallas clock motherboards,
all of it. But since the majority of failed electronics are caused by capacitors, the site has
some defaults tailored to them to make them easier to document. And for that I have set up a two
phase process based on originals and replacement parts. First should be all the information you
can get about the parts that the device originally came with. For capacitors this includes the more
obvious things like the capacitance and voltage, but also more technical things like the diameter,
type of capacitor, and the series. The goal here is that, even if compatible replacements aren’t
listed on the page, there is enough information for someone else to order parts based on the
descriptions of the originals. The values put here should also only be for the original parts,
never replacements, so there isn’t a game of telephone being played with the values making them
slightly wrong. When it comes to actually making repairs, replacement parts are the more beneficial
information to most people though. And when it comes down to it, the only information you
need for repairs is what to buy and where to put it. So the preference is to just give the
reference designations, a quantity for ease of ordering, and a compatible part number.
You can then link to somewhere you can buy the parts. In the Voodoo 5’s case I’ve added links
for multiple parts distributors. While it would be preferable to have both of these tables filled in
for every device page on the wiki, there will be many caveats and exceptions that are
understandable. For example if you previously worked on a device and only have your invoice
of the parts you ordered, feel free to put that information on a page. The goal isn’t to
make a perfect website, it is to help people. So whatever information leads to that end is welcome.
Both the original and replacement parts tables share a similar header and this is another part
that has potential critical importance. Devices can have many circuit boards in them and there
can be different versions of the same device. For example, there are a large number of revisions
to the Commodore 64 motherboard that would make different listings of parts incompatible. So the
tables with parts information need to be separated by what PCB they are for and which version. You
don’t need to be an expert on a particular device to do this though. To make this easier there are
just two sections that you should fill in, a basic name for the PCB which can be as simple as
“power supply” and write beneath it any model numbers or revisions you can see on the circuit
board itself or stickers on it. This should be enough information for anyone else coming by
to tell if they have the same version of a PCB and know if the parts listed would be relevant.
One last thing before we move away from the device page, as I mentioned I am still working on the
site and adding features, and I just added this one before writing my script here. So
I don’t have any great examples yet, but, at the top of every device page there is a tab labeled
“Disassembly” that can be used to document how to Disassemble or teardown a device.
It’s a little weird to add tabs like this and it currently shows up on
all pages so I’m still working out some kinks. But if you have more advanced notes and photos
this would be a better place to put them than the disassembly notes section which is meant to
give users a quick summary of things to watch out for before working on something. You could
also make a quick note there and link to the disassembly page with more information as well.
Another goal I have set for caps.wiki in addition to documenting repairs for devices is to educate
and demystify some aspects of repairs. So I’ve taken a lot of research I’ve done on capacitors
for upcoming videos and restructured it into sections of the wilki. Here you can read about
the types of capacitors there are, what their unique specifications are, how to measure them,
and more. I’ve also added a section for specialty information like working on a
device with a CRT. These specialty pages will come into play again later when we cover categories.
This information can not only be helpful to newcomers, but also serve as guides for
picking parts. Additionally I am trying to build up documentation on things that may be difficult
to find information on such as what brand identification markings there are on capacitors.
And it would be nice to eventually start getting enough data points to be able to predict which
devices could need repairs just by looking at the caps in them and by correlating brands,
production eras, and known failures. We’re a long way off from that right now,
but that is the kind of thing centralizing information like this could make possible.
So there's my pitch for the site, I hope I’ve piqued your interest and you check it out.
Let me quickly mention the topic of money though because nothing is free. I am funding this project
myself and am not currently looking for any financial contributions because I am serious
and passionate about this concept and don’t want it to be seen as me trying to profit off of it.
To me the worst case is that nobody uses it and it stays cheap to host forever. The site taking
off and becoming expensive is a problem I want to have. Now lets say that does happen, I promise
there will never be ads on caps wiki, though I could see taking sponsorships with something like
static images on the home page. I’ve seen too many wikis ruined by incorporating ads or other
monetizing methods. I want this to be a pure site that is light and easy to use. If you really want
to help in some way, contributing information would be the most impactful thing right now.
The site is also being published under the Creative Commons BY 4.0 license which
is extremely permissible. In short, that means as long as you say where the information came from,
I don’t care what you do with it. Share it in a youtube video, copy it for a blog post,
screenshot it for a tweet, whatever. I’m more concerned about the accessibility of the
information than strangle holding ownership. So do keep that in mind if you decide to contribute.
That is it for the moment, I’m going to have a followup video on this topic in a few days
that will go over how to contribute to caps wiki in more detail. But if you want to check it out
and get started now there are a few pages that you can read that document it all on the site as well.
It feels so good to finally put this out there and I hope that the vision I have for caps
wiki comes across. I embrace contributions with open arms to this site because I want it to be
as helpful as possible for people. So if you want to join and start making some pages feel free to.
I’m really excited about this and look forward to seeing what gets put up and
how the future of the site evolves. If you want some more examples of using the site
I have been documenting devices while livestreaming on twitch and have put up
the recordings for that on my second channel. So you could watch those now or follow me on
twitch for the next livestream of it. That is it for now though and I’ll see you next time.