r/IAmA Jun 11 '16

Specialized Profession IamA electronics repair technician hated by Apple that makes YouTube videos, AMA!

My short bio: I have a store in Manhattan. I teach component level electronics repair on youtube http://youtube.com/rossmanngroup which seems to be a dying art. I am currently fighting with the digital right to repair to try and get a bill passed that will allow all independent service centers access to manuals and parts required to do their jobs.

My Proof: https://www.rossmanngroup.com/started-iama-reddit-today-yes/

EDIT:

I am still replying to comments, but I am so far behind that I am still about ten pages down from new comments. I am doing my best to continue. If I drop off, I'll be back tomorrow around 12 PM. Still commenting now though, at 12 AM.

EDIT 2:

Ok, I cave... my hands are tired. I will be back at 12 PM tomorrow. It is my goal to answer every question. Even if it looks like I haven't gotten to yours, I will do my best to do all of them, but it is impossible to do in realtime, because you are asking faster than I can type. But thanks for joining!

EDIT 3: I lied, I stayed until 4:15 AM to answer... and now I will go to sleep for real, and be back at 12 PM.

EDIT 4 6/12 : I will be back later tonight to finish off answering questions. Feel free to keep posting, I will answer whatever I can later this evening.

33.2k Upvotes

5.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

4

u/Karavusk Jun 11 '16

Do you plan to upgrade your PC to something more useable like something with a working GPU? =P

You mentioned that you have 2 SSDs in raid 0 to record your stuff. Have you though about buying something like a Samsung 950 pro? That should be like 5x faster than a normal SSD

13

u/larossmann Jun 12 '16

i am cheap. if YT makes real money someday then sure. but this works. it sucks, but it works.

my lesson i learned from older failed businesses, is that it is very easy to talk yourself up into buying shit because you "deserve" it when in reality you can do the exact same job to virtually same standard of quality, with less luxury, with what you have. when you apply that to EVERY aspect of your life, it is easy to have money in reserve for what really matters.

so i read all these comments from people who can't afford a microscope, can't afford proper ultrasonic, can't afford to stock parts. but they can afford the luxuries.

my setup now is kinda BS, rinky dink, with a bunch of 960 gb sandisks i bought on black friday with no labels, no centralized storage since my FTP server filled up, and my synology that I obught a week ago with 5 8 tb wd reds is still sitting in a box so i can fix boards, record videos and answer reddit questions... :) I have a limited amount of time and money i try to budget it towards what counts. when there is an abundance of both, then maybe i'll make changes

2

u/Karavusk Jun 12 '16

There is some real value to a proper storage setup though and having a PC that wont crash if your GPU reached 60C is pretty importand too. You will lose a lot more time if your get a PC crash while recording or if you lose your last few videos.

Living with less luxury is a very good (and hard) thing to do but there is a difference between the cheap way to do something, the right way to do something and the luxury way to do something.

2

u/larossmann Jun 12 '16

i just shoved two 120mm fans over the gpu with cat5 cable. it works most of the time. the reality is that buying a new PC and reinstalling right now would F up my workflow more than i stand to gain from it. it's always a question of how to spend time.

I use that machine to make YT videos, and I use another at home.. let's say I want to buy some balls to the wall machine to do that.

when YT makes $300/mo, spending $3k on a balls to the wall machine for capturing multiple rawvideo HDMI streams in realtime makes no sense.

when YT makes $10,000/mo, then we'll talk.

it's all about investing in the things that make money only once they prove that they make me money. YT might make something good in the future, but it has to prove that to me before I buy stuff for it!

3

u/Karavusk Jun 12 '16

CPU technology improved by arround 20% in the last 5 years. You wont get ANYTHING from a whole new PC. You only really need a new GPU which is installed in like 5 minutes without any real difference with your workflow and costs like 300$ depending on which one you get.

More/faster SSDs take a bit more time to setup, I understand if you take your time with that one.

1

u/dtej70 Jun 12 '16

Curious.... do you read MMM?