Do you guys keep build information or general notes of things you do?

[Unknown_K]

When I am working on systems vintage or newer I scribble notes, save drivers and any manuals on my server, maybe save a link for useful information in my browser.

Generally my notes tends to get tossed when finished. Was wondering if anybody bothered to keep a lab book on repairs , upgrades, build information, and anything else related. Seems like after a few years you can forget what you have done to systems (if you own many) or even how you set them up.

 

[VERAULT]

When I am building something or need notes I print them or write them down. I have a few binders of notes going back 25 years but I dont use it much. Most go in the trash. As far as drivers. I have folders on the computer with thousands of downloads but I dont categorize them so its a black hole of stuff. Who has the time? My collection is too big so it all gets lumped together or tossed.

 

[NeXT]

For years I photographed work extensively as it progressed to catalog the positions of things or observations. Notes are kept in The Blue Book which is a notebook of various things I've had to keep track of during said projects. There's over 4000 images in my photobucket and that is just images I'm making accessible online. Drivers, software and downloaded manuals as they are brought in the house are cataloged and filed into respective shelves or folders on the server. Projects when put on hold are completed are grouped together into boxes and labeled but items such as the blue book remain on the shelf for universal access.

I got ruffled up a few years ago by people making it very clear that my heavy documenting of everything was not wanted and stopped actively doing the above so I can't really tell you what's going on with projects since then.

 

[creepingnet]

I've been trying to do a data dump of my brain to my website for awhile. It's just slow going. Someday I might not want to do this anymore, but someone else might find my information useful, either that or someday I need to re-access something I"ve come up with or done in the last 20 years I've been doing this, and I will have forgotten because I find the more I've been using Vintage computers, the less I"m having to work on them.

 

[Unknown_K]

I find I am doing two things in the last few years. Fixing some minor problems with machine I have already setup ages ago, and working on newer gear for whatever reason.

Some things are well documented on the internet, like the Apple G4 MDD power supplies I have sitting in my garage since 2017 that I just started tearing into to fix. So my notes would just be what I checked compared to what is probably wrong documented in the badcaps forum. Problem is forums are known to go down.