malada

Since I'm a techie I use a lot of techie terms: CPU, SSD, etc. in my YouTube channel. Since YouTube's Closed Caption auto translator sucks I insert my own Closed Captions using a special program to create an SRT file. This is a fairly standard format for inserting captions into a video file.

I ran a different spell checker than I usually use and failed to double check it. When I pushed it up to YouTube I noticed a bunch of words were wrong. When I saw all my SSD were converted to SAD the Clue dropped.

I was able to edit the captions so I didn't have to re-upload everything. Lessons learned.

In my last post I talked about an old desktop that had been a bit of a pain to work with and now that I had it working again, what I was going to do with it.

In a way, it was my own fault: I trusted the Internet. The beastie is the Dell Optiplex 410 and I found a some forum posts that said it could handle a quad core Q6700 CPU and 8 gigs of memory, when it's spec'ed to max out with a dual core E6700 and 4 gigs of memory.

Yeah... forum post was... optimistic. Mine booted with a Q6600 which is a little slower than the Q6700 and with 6 gigs of memory... but it never lasted long before becoming unstable.

After 'downgrading' it to the proper limits it seems fine... then the DVD went south.

I finally found one spare DVD drive and got it working again... but the project I had planned for it was transferred to a beefier Super Potato. So what do I do with this POS?

I regularly check the Haiku OS website. Haiku OS is an open source fork of the old BEOS. I've played with the Beta 3 versions and the nightly builds and it looks very promising. In the forums they posted an announcement for their Beta 4 release candidate - both 32 bit and 64 bit versions.

Testing weird operating systems? Sign me up!

I've got 4.. 5.. maybe 6 lovable loser computers I can load up Haiku on and give it a work out. These range from a single core AMD to a Super Potato running a quad core Intel. This also gives me more content for my Youtube channel Malada Media Labs. No sponsors, no patreon, not a whole lot of content... mostly me resurrecting junked systems. I film with a cellphone, edit everything in Linux, even create my own music for the channel. It scratches my creative itch along with my techie itch.

-m