New Life on Old ThinkPad T41

Found my old IBM ThinkPad T41 in a cupboard. Wanted to see if I get it back to working condition.

Installed Windows XP on it, but couldn't get WiFi to work. I mean WiFi work, I can see the WiFi LED on. I can see the WiFi icon in the notification area. However, it's not able to see any WiFi access points.

Clean installed Windows 7 to see if it's any better. Wireless not even detected. Have to get the install the driver packs from my Windows XP disc to get that working. Ended up with a similar situation. However, after resetting the wireless interface, Windows was able to detect wireless networks, and go from there. The next issue I'm experiencing is that the laptop runs too slow on Windows 7. Opening a simple webpage takes ages (relatively speaking). And after installing Windows Defender, it became even slower (if that's even possible). CPU is almost always at a 100% and the hard disk is always active. Hard to believe this is the same corporate laptop running Windows and Office and Wireshark (Ethereal) back in the day!

Tried to load CloudReady via USB, but it won't boot up properly. Looks like Linux is my only option. My first choice would've been Linux Mint, but I reckon it's still too "modern" for the T41. We need something that is built/designed for old, slow 32-bit PCs from the ground up.

• Damn Small Linux seems to be dead.
• Read somewhere that lubuntu doesn't have the WiFi drivers out of the box.
• Tried Puppy Linux, but the BionicPup variant I downloaded won't install because it comes with a PAE kernel, and the CPU on the T41 doesn't have PAE capability.
• Finally settled on antiX. Based on Debian, but totally free of systemd. Now that's a feature.

Booted up antiX from USB stick just fine. Installed it on the hard disk with no issues. Got the WiFi working using ceni. Memory usage is really low, and CPU is pretty much idle if you're not doing anything. Firefox takes up a few hundred MBs of memory. Web browsing is slow, but works. Watching videos over the network or YouTube pretty much maxes out the CPU. Looks like this is only going to be useful as a text editor.

Uploading Clash Royale Matches to YouTube

Started off with me wanting to put my Clash Royale matches on YouTube. As always, wanted to go with the simplest, easiest, and cheapest way to do this.

First off, recording the gameplay. Two ways to do this - Google Play Games or as I'm using a Galaxy S9+, the Samsung Game Tools. With Google Play Games, you select the game from the carousel, then click on the floating videocamera icon to start recording. Quality setting is either 720p HD or 480p SD. You can also record yourself (audio and video) via an in-game round selfie window, if that's what you want. With Samsung Game Tools, these are the options:

• record format (mpeg or gif)
• audio source (mic or game)
• video resolution (720px or 1080px)
• choice of different bitrates and aspect ratios

Went with the latter, as I want the recording to be as hi-res as possible.

Now that gameplay recording is sorted out, I needed a way to edit the video - basically trim the start and end portions. I know that the Photos app that came bundled with Windows 10 is able to trim videos. From the app, click on the Edit & Create button, then select Trim. Move the blue marker and align the starting point with it. Do the same for the endpoint. When ready, click on the Save as button. Aaand it spits out an error message. "It looks as though you don't have permission to save changes to this file. Try saving a copy instead." That's what I'm trying to do! Tried saving to a different location/folder. Tried changing the filename. It just won't save the edited video clip!

A search on Google shows that I'm not the only one having this issue. Didn't find any solution that worked for me, so had to look for other software that can do the job.

Found mostly trialware that requires either payment or a subscription. Some of the software/websites looks dodgy I don't even want to try them even if they're free. I did play with the open-source OpenShot a bit, but it keeps stalling and freezing. In the end, I went with Sony Vegas Pro. After a few YouTube tutorials, I was trimming videos like a pro. One thing I noticed - Vegas Pro won't render your vertical video when you use the Sony AVC/MVC format. Made sure the render properties match the project properties, but still kept getting "invalid parameter". Switched to MainConcept AVC/AAC and 1080x1920 resolution works just fine when rendering the final video. The only downside is MainConcept only supports 30fps, while Sony AVC/MVC can do 60fps.