Sharing technical information

Gerrie · Post by **Gerrie** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 8:56 am

Ok, I wanted to move this to a seperate thread to not polute the Kega thread:

About sharing technical information. What about setting up a some sort of Wiki were we all can submit technical information about various Sega systems ? That would give all of us a good knowledge base without the need for sharing code.

this is indeed a very good idea !
I don't really know how that kind of stuff works but maybe starting explaining each sub-section (VDP, YM2612, MEMORY MANGMENT...) based on official documentation would be a good start

then anybody could add its own findings or undocumented quirks

If it needs hosting (or mirroring) I can give the space. I really suck at web stuff so I dunno if my host has the "right" stuff installed (ASP,PHP,MySQL etc..) to support installing of wiki.

How about improve http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Genesis_Programming instead of creating new Wiki?

What are your thoughts about this ? Personally I would like to have a dedicated website for this, because it will not only cover the MegaDrive/Genesis but also other Sega consoles (and perhaps arcades ?) as well. I also want to be able to upload existing documents (such as the official hardware/programming manuals etc)

I like the idea of having sub-sections in it. It will make things more structured.

So please share your ideas

Christuserloeser · Post by **Christuserloeser** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 9:30 am

It'd also be possible to use the existing Wikis at DCS or DCEmulation:

http://www.dreamcast-scene.com/index.ph ... evelopment

http://dcemulation.org/?title=Welcome_to_DCEmulation!

Full access could be given to anyone interested, and we could have extensive sections about each and every Sega console there.

HardWareMan · Post by **HardWareMan** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 11:01 am

And it would not be such as to violate the copyrights? They can shut down that site.

Shiru · Post by **Shiru** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 11:10 am

Gerrie wrote:I also want to be able to upload existing documents (such as the official hardware/programming manuals etc)

You don't need Wiki or website for this, you need separate filehosting or ftp.

Gerrie wrote:I like the idea of having sub-sections in it. It will make things more structured.

No problem with any existing Wiki, you can create as many sections (separate articles) as you want, in common space or article space.

AamirM · Post by **AamirM** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 2:48 pm

The problem with some of the "public" wikis is that some stupid people can submit the article for deletion etc.. and we don't have any control over it.

I also want to be able to upload existing documents (such as the official hardware/programming manuals etc)

I already have many of them uploaded (including 32x and SegaCD ones) on my web.

Shiru · Post by **Shiru** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 2:53 pm

AamirM wrote:The problem with some of the "public" wikis is that some stupid people can submit the article for deletion etc.. and we don't have any control over it.

Well, if you have hosting with PHP5+ and MySQL4+, I can help with setting MediaWiki up.

AamirM · Post by **AamirM** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 3:13 pm

I am pretty sure they are installed. But just let me just confirm with the host just in case. Wordpress worked previously (if that helps

).

Shiru · Post by **Shiru** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 3:50 pm

Wordpress works with PHP4 and greater. Problem with MediaWiki that it moved to PHP5 completely in 2007, so if you have PHP4, you can use 1.6.11 only, and current version is 1.13.3.

Pascal · Post by **Pascal** » Tue Jan 13, 2009 7:32 am

i've some space and access to php & msql hosting (www.pascalorama.com) , if interested, drop me a mp, i gonna check the version of php & mysql

AamirM · Post by **AamirM** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 4:43 pm

*BUMP*

@Shiru
Okay I've got both MySQL4+ and PHP5+ (http://aamirm.hacking-cult.org/test.php) on the server. If you want to set-up Media Wiki, PM me for details on accessing the server.

Hopefully we can get this thing started before everyone becomes busy again.

notaz · Post by **notaz** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 9:46 am

How about setting up a wiki here, somewhere like gendev.spritesmind.net/wiki . As most interested people hang around here anyway, it would make most sense to have the wiki right on this site.

KanedaFr, what do you think?

Shiru · Post by **Shiru** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 1:01 pm

Wiki is running, http://aamirm.hacking-cult.org/wiki

Place is least important thing, it's just a website. It's address is does not matter. Most important thing is wiki content, and this is great problem. Content later can be transferred to any other wiki easily.

AamirM · Post by **AamirM** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 2:10 pm

Place is least important thing, it's just a website. It's address is does not matter. Most important thing is wiki content, and this is great problem. Content later can be transferred to any other wiki easily.

Agreed.

On the other hand, there are ways people can be made aware of the Wiki. Maybe Kaneda can place a link on his main web

. I'll update my main webpage with link to this Wiki. I may even put a link of it inside Regen (so you can be sure people will know about it) .

We also need to get permissions from the people to transfer existing documentation to there (like the YM2612).

EDIT:
What should be done next? Should there be different categories (like VDP, 68K, Z80, YM2612 etc....)?

Huge · Post by **Huge** » Tue Mar 17, 2009 2:20 am

I could offer hosting, but it's on the same server as the one AamirM just set up, so theres's not much point.

But like it was said before, a wiki doesn't mean anything if there are no people to fill it up with info.

Nemesis · Post by **Nemesis** » Tue Mar 17, 2009 5:14 am

We also need to get permissions from the people to transfer existing documentation to there (like the YM2612).

Anyone can use any of the information I've provided in any way they want, including adding it to this wiki, or any other wiki.

I don't think getting permission to add information provided by people in the reverse engineering community is the real problem though, it's official documentation, like the documentation we have from Sega for example. Technically, we shouldn't be sharing that in any way, shape or form.

Personally, I vote that we completely ignore and disregard copyright issues for all scanned and transcribed information we have from all official sources. We really can't respect the copyright of the original authors of these official documents. We don't right now anyway, and we're never going to get permission to use them. The simple fact is though, if Yamaha, Sega, or any other company doesn't like us sharing one of their copyrighted documents, they can do what every other copyright holder does in situations like this, which is send us a cease and desist, and we can remove it. Personally, I think the realistic chances of this ever happening are non-existant, and in the interim, we can build a useful wiki with the information we need.

If we all agree that this is the case, there needs to be an understanding amoung the people writing articles in the wiki that it is ok to refer to these official documents, otherwise that info is simply not going to be used. I think the documents themselves should be hosted on the wiki, with alternate versions (eg, transcriptions, scans, older versions, etc), and our own errata section for each document (since we all know of errors in the official docs). In that way, this wiki can actually become a comprehensive reference on these chips, giving the best, most accurate information from both official and unofficial sources.

SpritesMind.Net

Sharing technical information

Sharing technical information

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