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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."
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.
probably the same kind of stuff that was in it a couple months ago.
...delivering the occasional baby...
All my money went to Nigeria and all I got was this lousy sig. . .
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
...delivering the occasional baby...
... finishing off the occasional roach ...
- 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--
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):
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...
'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.