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What's in Your Toolbox?
Embedded Geek asks: "I am a software developer with access to (conservatively) $100K worth of emulators, protocol analyzers, and debugging equipment at work. Nevertheless, as in every lab since Frankenstein's, I can never find a meter or screwdriver when I need one - and God help you if you need electrical tape! Over the years I have accumulated a personal toolkit to fill the gaps between what my employer provides and what I need to get my job done. In addition to the basics (a meter, screwdrivers, cable ties, boxcutter, extra power cables, duct tape) I have a number of oddball items that have come in handy (serial cable gender changers & converters, a dental mirror, dental picks). I'm curious what other items slashdotters doing hardware/software development have found useful that their bosses never provide. What about those in the IT/support world?"
It's great for listening to hard drives to determine how screwed up they are. Start hearing little ticking or grinding noises? Back that sucker up and get a new one.
;-)
Other than that, a 9 lbs. hammer comes in handy for those machines that refuse to cooperate
A Swiss army knife/Leatherman tool.
I suppose one of those fancy-pancy ones targeted at IT workers would have some useful job-specific items, but just having an easily accessible assortment of quick-use generic tools (knife, pliers, tweezers, etc.) in a compact package has gotten me out of some spectacular jams in the past. You never know when you'll need something basic like a screwdriver, but you can't (for whatever reason) reach your normal box of goodies.
-A.
What did the walrus say to the penguin? "No soap, radio."
as a developer, the only time I needed tape is when i broke my cd tray and i tape it closed. btw, i used scotch tape.
-- ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space!
probably not out of the ordinary, but those plastic tie wraps tend to be especially handy for harnessing those particularly spiteful wires.
--- If we knew half the things we shouldn't we'd stop wishing we knew it all
Besides the standard set of screw drivers, and adaptors, and other stuff allready mentioned, I carry: * linksys usb NIC (size of a memory key)
* network crimper, punchtool, striper, and cable tester
* forceps (surgical locking neadle nose plyers)
* laptop to 40pin ide adaptor
* flashlight
* pen +pencil + cd marker
* dental mirror
* Antec ATX Power supply Tester
* Multimeter
* spare mouse
* digital camera (occasionally to remember really fubared stuff)
frs 2 way radios come in handy, as does a cordless drill, bandaids, and your whits.
I keep several pair in my box.. Great for pulling screws out of tight spots, fishing wires.. etc
If privacy had a tombstone it would read "We did it for your own good" . -- John Twelve Hawks
What are you, some kind of terrorist?
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
Lockblade pocket knife
Victornox(accept no substitutes)swiss army knife.
Leatherman
Paper clips.
I have rarely ever found myself needing more.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Fine-point tweezers and a magnifying glass. Luckily, we can find these at work, and we even have those nifty magnifying lenses with built-in lights. They really help for people with fat fingers and bad eyes (like me).
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
--Scott Adams
Gender changers are a useful tool in your shop? What kinds of problems do you run into that you gotta go whacking off body parts of sticking new ones on with super glue?
Reminds me a little bit of a Neil Gaiman short story. Guy develops a pill to cure some disease but it has an odd side effect, it can change your sex. Society began to use the drug recreationally.
is usually build PCs. And not as often as I'd like (the poorness!) but my favorite tool is the little grabby thing that gets loose screws out from motherboards. When doing any work with a pc and screws it is guaranteed you will drop a screw onto the board at least once. Radio Shack makes great computer tool kits.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
...with a URL. He wears his toolbox.
http://primates.ximian.com/~jbz/vest.html
My favorite is the LED Petzel "Zipka" (sp??). It's quite small, the batteries last a very long time, and the unit is thin enough on your forehead that it doesn't get in the way when you have to squeeze back/under/over/beside your desk/rack/computer to see/insert/remove a serial-number/cable/screw...
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
YES! I am not the only one who finds these usefull. I get some strange looks when I pull them out to fix a problem. Event the local geeks think it is a little odd.
A soft-bristle toothbrush.
If you deal with anything that accumulates a great amount of corrosion, a toothbrush is perfect to remove it.
probably the same kind of stuff that was in it a couple months ago.
At my worksite, we have an area called Labstock.
Basically it's all the tools and accessories that are used at our site.
Tools(Everything we need), clips, zip-ties, batteries(About 15 different types), IC chips, blank eeproms, blank CD's, labels, surface mount components (Resistors, Caps,etc), and on and on and on....
Works great, we have a person whose job it is to re-order stuff thats used, if you take the last item, you put the tag on his desk, he re-stocks the bin.
The only problem is people pilfering for personal use (The AA batteries fly out of there like nobodies business).
Adding a security camera and posting a notice that it was there drastically reduced the pilfering.
A couple of old laptops, set to boot dos and run a terminal emulator. Use them all the time. Dos boot disks with Aefdsk, fdisk, format and debug. Jumpers and paper clips to jumper pins 2-3 of RS-232 connectors to loopback signals. A lineman's handset, preferably obtained in the traditional way. RJ-45 and RJ-11 crimper, connectors and cable. Extra ethernet hub, patch cables and crossover cables. Spare SDRAM modules Everyone else's username and password.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
My employment contract. It's the most useful thing in a politically charged environment.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Lots and lots of bits, half 0's and half 1's.
I have no use for bytes or words, they just take up too much room in my special carryng case (my bit bucket). Besides I can assemble any byte or word that I desire with just a little work and it really cuts down on inventory.
A spatula, a stack of hamburger wrappers, and a grill scraper. You want fries with that?
Percussive maintenance - 'nough said.
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
- Regular and Philips screwdrivers, etc.
- Dikes, Needle Nose, and Bent Needle Nose pliers
- A big pair linemans pliers
/w cutter
- A big pair of slip joint pliers
- An old (but effective) stripper/bolt cutter/crimper
- Assorted files, including diamond
- Micrometer and Caliper set (mostly for show)
- Metal ruler, both English and Metric
- Wrench set, combination, Craftsman, english sizes
- Plastic "twiddle stick" for tuning coils
- Craftsman 42 Watt soldering iron, with copper coated iron tips, solder wick, and real lead/tin Kester solder
- Water, and stand for soldering iron
- Flux (for non-copper work), Silver Solder, and Solder-Wick
- Spring loaded solder sucker
- Multimeter with probes
- Jumper cables
- Bits of phone wire (very handy)
- Automatic centerpunch
- Various parts and screws
- Fiberglass scraping tool (for cleaning contact points)
- Xacto knives
- Hobby metal saw
- Pin vise with bits down to #40
- Razor blades and scraper
- F-Connector wrench (great for tightening the cables behind a VCR, etc)
- Power cord with leads on other end (ever need to put 110 somewhere as a test?
- Mechanical pencil & Paper
- Electrical tape
- Super glue
- Safety goggles
And this tool kit does NOT include:All of this is housed in an old NCR Cash register repair suitcase a friend gave me. The mere sight of a 42 Watt non-temperature controlled iron is enough to convince most people I'm crazy, but it's darn good for doing SMC repairs, gets everything up to temperature in no time, saving the parts.
--Mike--
As a UNIX admin, over the past decade, I have collected a plethora of proggies, scripts, etc that I just can't live without. Since I am inherently lazy, I write a shell script for everything. I have kept all my scripts and have put them all on CDs. Plus, every software dev tool I have collected over the years from previous jobs. The go in my sack of goodies. I wouldnt know what I'd do if I lost these things(Yes, they're a crutch, but at leats I get the job done!)
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
Since I work with some embedded stuff as well, it has happened that my pocket knife have come in handy (some people actually fasten those screws at the end of the com-ports I need access to in order to speak to the equipment).. But it depends on what you do (well, I have also used a multimeter once, but only because I had no lightbulb and two pieces of wire handy).
If you need more tools than that, you can't possibly call yourself a software developer.
Besides, the ultimate toolchest has been discussed at slashdot before. But anyway, here is my suggestion (but for software developers):
one important section of my toolbox are various chemicals:
isopropanol for cleaning various surfaces
good thermal grease (for changing coolers)
instant and epoxy glue
ballistol (for saving fans, great lubricant, not only for weapons)
sea water spray (for my poor nose if i must work in dusty environment)
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
A hammer.
Rather then carry around one tool to solve each problem, it's much simpler to carry around a hammer and treat all problems as nails.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
A telco central office simulator. Ring-it http://www.digitalproductsco.com/ringit.htm lets you plug 2 modems or 2 faxes together and simulates the telco system. Excellent for debugging lan fax systems or getting ppp dialup to work.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
I never ever go anywhere to fix a computer without my little black notebook. It containes the following:
Serial Numbers and CD Keys (What!, you lost your Win2K Serial, Bad Monkey!)
Usernames and Passwords (like lusers ever remember their "saved" passwords)
Various ISP information
Miscellanious esoteric commands
Other random tibbits I might need (like how to make a modem dial fast, etc.)
Rule of Life Number 2: Remember, it can all go to hell at any minute. --Jimmy Buffet
'98 boot disk (and bootable CD)r e
Spinrite
MemCheck
CheckIt/QAPlus
pcAnywhe
VNC
WinZip
Acrobat
DOS version of PKZip
Collection of common nic/video/printer/etc drivers
Copies of major OS's (Win2K, 98 OSR2 etc.)
Copies of Office
Copies of SP's and patches
Copies of browsers (IE, Netscape, Opera)
L0pht Crack
Your favorite IP scanner and other IP tools (e.g. Putty)
Other tools depending on OS's you work with (e.g. JCMD for Netware, Upromote for NT, the Win2K/NT resource kits, 'Nix boot disk and utils and hundreds of other favorite need-specific utils
Ceci n'est pas un post
As a software development consultant, I have been sent off to quite a few different companies. Being paid by the hour, and as a matter of personal pride, I try to be efficient in solving a customers needs. But if I were to rely on the software tools provided to me by my clients, I would never get anything done. This is why my laptop, which is filled with useful software, never leaves my side. It is almost inevitable that during the initial stages of a project, everything from the workstations to the servers for a system will be in a complete state of dissaray. I have been in /very/ large companies where the systems are all locked down, and you need to file paper requests for software to be installed on your workstation (god forbit it's not in their catalog), or to have a database created - these requests could take from days to months.
A laptop running:
- Windows XP Pro or 2000 Server. Gives me drivers for everything. I can plug in floppies, my Jazz drive or portable burners or whatever I need to get Data and backups around. Good luck using the NT4 the client gives me.
- MS Office Suite w Access - this gets used for everything, from tracking meetings in Outlook to calculations in Excel.
- IDE: JBuilder, Netbeans, Eclipse, Visual Studio, Emacs, EditPad, JEdit, etc, etc.
- Database: As if I want to twiddle my thumbs for a week while Systems dept creats a table and gives me access. I can have half the prototype done by then. Access ships with a stripped down version of SQL Server - great for getting started on the basic SQL no matter what DB it's eventually targetted for.
- Photophop/Corel Graphics Suite: Handy for creating icons for your UI - or at least sensible place holders till graphic artist can get around to it - and gives them an idea what you need too.
- Steinberg Wavelab: same as previous, sounds for your app, etc.
- Cygwin! Bash. Never leave home without it. Perl, Python, XFree86, GCC, Make, and and endless list of every reason I love Linux all available for your convenience. Great for connectivity with Unix systems too.
- Mozilla, IE6, etc: Current browsers for testing web sites. God knows what the client has installed. I always code for the latest and most bug free platform I can find, and then backport and fix later - that way I know it's the software that's broken rather than some error in my coding which could kill time looking for. Can throw on SP - JC's SGML/XML parser for validation. Mozilla includes javascript debugger and DOM viewer tools as well!
- Latest JDK from Sun, WSFTP, JBoss, PHP, Apache - HTTP server, Ant, Xalan, Xerces, Tomcat, etc, etc, Boost, ACE, Loki, etc C++ libraries.
- A Documentation folder with EVERYTHING - from RFC's and JavaDoc to most all the latest W3C Rec's, to MSDN stuff, to whatever.
Loads of other stuff I forget, but you get the idea, the Swiss Army Knife laptop. I would die without it. Or at least be 1/5 as productive.
This was more of a big deal when I spent a lot of time in the machine room, but it was also useful when I was tired and easily distracted -- a 100 count box of Moldex Pura-Fit 6800 ear plugs. A single box would last me about a year.
When purchased in bulk, foam ear plugs are reasonably affordable. NoiseBuster headphones are helpful, too, for cutting down machine noise -- but the earplugs are best.
I find myself tiring easily when constantly exposed to machine noise from loud PC's, routers, etc.
I am a software developer ...
What on earth do you need electrical tape, screwdriver, etc. for? It sounds like a HARDWARE problem.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Get a Leatherman. I love mine --all 4 (a micra (on the keychain, only one I actually purchased myself), the regular (wedding gift), super tool (xmas gift), and the juice (bday gift)).
;)
For IT, I'd recommend the Super Tool. With one little device you get:
-- needlenose pliers
-- regular pliers
-- wire cutters
-- hard-wirte cutters
-- clip-point knife
-- serrated knife
-- wood/bone saw
-- metal/wood file
-- ruler
-- can/boottle opener
-- screwdriver
-- philps screwdriver
-- electric crimper
-- write stripper
-- awl punch
Okay, so I never really found a use for the awl. But having the pliers, both kinds of screwdrivers, the stripper and crimper all together was really handy. And having the bottle opener for when the day is over is not bad either.
-Bill
SlashSig Karma: Excellent (mostly affected by moderatio
precision screwdrivers -- for some reason the smaller sizes tend to get a lot of use by me. I use a kit whose upper end is about right for HD mounting screws and whose lower end is good for palm pilots, glasses, and various small devices not meant to be user maintainable.
cryptographic keys and commonly used crypto software on a business card CDR-- being able to work securely from almost anywhere on the net comes in handy.
small, powerful flashlight-- the one I'm using uses a set of three of the newish super-bright LEDs. It puts out a lot of light, and lasts hundreds of hours on some AAs, so I never have to worry about it being sapped of power when I need it.
my Palm-- it has about a billion field uses. In particular, with the right set of adapters, it can be a good emergency console terminal for headless servers.
cell phone
Linuxcar boot toolkit on a business card CDR-- I really should roll my own, but this thing has most of the good stuff on it. There are times when "dd" is the perfect tool. If I rolled my own, I would probably add the Coroner's toolkit.
Forgot to mention in the original submission - I picked up a pair of soft sided tool bags at Home Depot this weekend for $10 (can't link into their site but the SKU is 775434). Great for storing all the stuff if you don't have too much.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
You got it - management blamed software.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
AKA sheet metal nibbler. The case has an extra flange just where the full length isa card is suppost to go. No problem. Plus no more ragged edges from when you hacked it out with your leatherman.
B LE R
http://www.jdr.com/interact/item.asp?itemno=NIB
Oh really?
Don't force it, get a bigger hammer.
"Understand you're having a little Jimmy Page trouble."
You need a cell phone.
"Hey Mike! I can't fix this piece of !@)$#*@#$, come down here and help me!"
http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/02q3/020820/inde x.html
How To Assemble The Ultimate Toolbox
Summary:
Finding the correct tool for the job can sometimes be a chore. We look at some of the tools that should be in the Ultimate Toolbox and take a look at some ideas on what goes into having the right tool for the right job.
THERE IS NO DATA. THERE IS O
>copying 500+ meg .pst files for users moving to new
>locations (yes, I really need EVERY email I've sent
>AND received during the last 3 years, even the
>Powerpoint-attachment birthday announcements)
LOL.
We had a guy who had several 1GB+ PST files, including messages that were migrated from the old mainframe email system All Those Years Ago.
If it clears up the matter, I originally trained as a tech before discovering the joys of coding.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
I use this tool kit.
The most important thing to have in your toolbox is a large, stuffed, pink bunny.
Carry it around everywhere at work. Converse with it regularly. Get its opinion on other peoples' technical problems. Make your co-workers greet the rabbit whenever they greet you.
This should keep people from calling you unless it's REALLY an emergency.
Once upon a time I was asked to help with some of the computers at school.
If you wanted to do ANYTHING internal with these computers, you had to get a scissors and cut about 5 twist ties (without cutting any wires!) before you were able to accomplish what you wanted, even if it was something simple like adding a memory chip - the wires were twist tied in the way.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
* one forty-five caliber automatic
* two boxes of ammunition
* four days' concentrated emergency rations
* one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills
* one miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible
* one hundred dollars in rubles
* one hundred dollars in gold
* nine packs of chewing gum
* one issue of prophylactics
* three lipsticks
* three pair of nylon stockings
I finally got frustrated carrying a wallet of every CD I could possibly need, and even then not having the program I really wanted, so I made a custom 'tools' CD that I carry everywhere
I burn about 125MB of network tools (packet sniffers, traceroute and ping tools, hex editor, etc), system diag tools, boot disk images for every windows version from 95 to 2k, various 'toys' like tweakui, winzip, pkzip, and things I install a lot like Pegasus mail onto a 3.5" bootable CD (it boots to a dos prompt where I have over 3MB of dos diag tools available). It also detects/loads CD drives on booting. The final product is small enough to drop into my shirt pocket.
Then, in whatever leftover space I have, I put a few Mp3 files and winamp so I have some music to work by no matter WHOSE office I'm in.
This CD has been a lifesaver on dozens of jobs. Whenever I find better tools, I create a new version and burn about 10 copies (some for friends, 1 for the toolbox, 1 for the office, 1 for home, and 1 each for the glove compartments of my wife's care and mine so I NEVER am without it).
So far, I am up to verison 1.4 and finding new things to put on in every day.
i think velcro might actually (no fooling) be the official way of bundling cable runs according to the IEEE. we learned this in my Cisco class in high school. i just use tie-wraps :)
.cig - what you do after winning a good flame war
Or other sticky blobby stuff. Very useful when you dont have a magnetized screwdriver and need to stick a tiny screw in a near-inaccessible hole. Small blob on the screwdriver, stick the screw on, place in hole, turn.
:)
Does everyone do this? Will I get down-moderated 'obvious'?
Baz
I work in an RF engineering environment, so the requirements are a little different.
We're pretty well stocked (Gender changers? There are at least two labs with ample stock of any kind of coaxial RF adapter you can think of...), but occasionally something is hard to find. (It's usually somewhere, but when the lab manager or whoever normally has the equipment is out of office - uhoh...)
For those emergencies, I have in my car (Note: I try to keep it away from work, so I don't actually bring anything in unless needed.)
Full repair toolkit (Wrenches, socket set, etc.) - It's always in my car anyway since it's primarily for automotive repair. I've occasionally needed to grab the odd wrench size when someone has borrowed the driver we need.
Precision screwdriver set w/small pliers, wirecutters, etc. - Haven't needed it at work, nice to know it's a short trip out to the car
Dremel tool - I expected to need this, but never did need it.
Heat gun - Actually, now back at home permanently. Needed to briefly work with LARGE chunks of heatshrink and Murphy hit - The guy who keeps track of our heat gun was out for the week.
I know the feeling though... One piece of test equipment I work with (Rohde & Schwarz FSIQ spectrum analyzer) is *alone* worth $115k new.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
...there should be a snack or two. A bag of cookies or something, a can of soda or bottle of water (handy for putting out the fires you start).
Cookies are also useful as bribes. Just toss one a good distance away and over-curious dogs and small children will leave you alone for a while (until they come back for more...can't win). Never keep dog biscuits for the dogs, you'll throw one to a kid sooner or later. And that will be the time someone sees you doing it.
...
have my portable butane torch/soldering iron in my tool box. See .07 lead pencil for straightening pins
and solder
spare butane,
heat shrink,
tie-wraps,
toothbrush,
needles
lighter, matches,
mirror,
vice-grips(snubnose and needle nose),
hemo-stats(multi-purpose(work/break)),
A cable tester,
a few paperclips ,
2 ethernet cables and a crossover box,
wire strippers & crimpers
multimeter
a cigarette lighter to 110 inverter
Mini Mag light
Straight edge(steel 18" ruler, it just fits)
set of wrenches,(English & metric & Alen)
Channel Locks small and tiny
a whistle
CD Book with justabout all you need
fishing string & weight
pully
a folded up coathanger
Gender benders null modems
teflon tape
jb-weld(this stuff is awesome)
magnifing glass
tweesers
and a Rifle bullet(no Idea)
With those, I can do (or get) anything else I need.
I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered. - George Best
(Helpful hint: if you have trouble opening the side with the three tools that include the phillips screwdriver, try keeping it in the case with the lanyard eye sticking out. There's enough friction that you can just slide the eye back and it'll pull out the inner tools.)
I don't recommend the older leatherman tools or any of the clones. The handles on the Wave are designed to let you really grip the pliers comfortably. The new blade lock mechanisms are very positive, I've never accidentally opened one or accidentally not-locked one, but they're easy to unlock when you need to. The only tool I miss from my Swiss Army knives of the past is the pair of tweezers.
Other miscellaneous tools I have in my desk that have proven handy:
-
Four or five little kits of jeweller's screwdrivers. They tend to get lost and/or tips get twisted, and the little kits are cheap enough to just have a few laying around to loan out to people. Sometimes they don't come back.
-
A pair of tweezers. Were you paying attention?
-
A spool of wirewrap wire, a wirewrapping tool, and a handful of miniature DPDT switches. They're great for making switch-operated "broken hardware" testing setups that you can "fix" again with the flip of a switch.
-
Screwdriver handle with a set of interchangable bits, including Torx bits.
-
1/4" and 3/16" nut drivers
-
A hand-operated drill (kind of like a manual egg beater, and has four drill bits stored on the shaft.) Makes for nicer looking cube mods, and nobody can hear it.
-
A bunch of paper clips are nice, but invest in a quality set of lockpicks.
-
A flashlight. The backs of PCs under desks is too dark to see the difference between "line in / mic in / line out / speaker out" on the back of a sound card; or between the "phone" and "jack" on the back of a modem card.
-
A soldering iron and heat shrink tubing make for nice looking cable repairs. And a voltmeter helps pin them out.
-
Several Altoids tins of random tiny screws, recovered from disk drives and PC cases over the years.
Hmm... a lot of the cable repair stuff is from a time long ago when I did a lot more RS-232 work with peripherals. If you don't deal with peripherals, that gear may end up going unused.John
Those who have a miner's light (or similar) in their toolbox are just nerds. Get a flashlight that doesn't attach to your forehead and you can step up to geek.
The #2 most useful thing has typically been tweezers.
On the software side, if you're talking about PC support, the three floppies everyone should have are the Windows 98 boot floppy, and disks 1 and 2 (both of them) of a partition magic rescue set. Dos partition magic does everything windows partition magic does (when you think about it, partition magic doesn't do anything THAT complicated, but no one else has bothered to write the same thing yet that I'm aware of). I actually keep a CD with rawrite, rawritewin, dos 6.22 floppy images, and a win98 boot floppy image, so I can make new ones wherever I go. The dos floppies aren't worth much, admittedly.
Now the ObDisclaimer: If you have a magnetized screwdriver, keep it away from magnetic media as much as possible. I've yet to screw up a hard disk by installing or removing its screws with mine, your mileage may vary.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"