Slashdot Mirror
What's On Your Tech Bench?
Twev1701 writes "As a small computer repair company that has seen enormous growth in the past few months, we are now looking to expand our facilities. With construction starting on our office space, we now turn to the task of designing a new tech bench. Our existing bench is 6'x3', has a dedicated 15" CRT, 4 port KVM, and overhead storage bins for parts. With a new bench of 12'x4', we have lots of room for expansion. What essentials would the /. community put on their new tech bench?"
a screwdriver
A Multimeter, a logic analyser and a scope too.. :)
btw, first post.
Apart from computers and cases of varying kinds, you need to remember your mini fridge! Don't forget the mini fridge!
I'd get a much bigger bench.
a flux capacitor
an expresso machine would be highest on my option list. Seriously though, what the /. commune would want would be quite different from what your clients would want.
Timang tinggi tinggi
parang sudah asah
alang alang mandi
biar sampai basah
mini-fridge
http://www.thinkgeek.com/cubegoodies/toys/6ad2/
Definitely make sure you have enough ground straps and a place to ground them to......
Because we ALL know 99% of techies out there ALWAYS use ground straps. A+ basics right there.
A copy of every OS you work with plus keys.
A coffee/tea mug and coaster.
What is a tech bench used for? (I don't know, I'm asking.)
I have a "tech chair", but that's just a fancy name for my chair. It has casters and can go up and down at the press of a lever. It also leans back, but I can prevent that movement by a little latch on the side of the chair. The tech chair also swivels.
But back to your question: What's on my tech bench? Me. And sometimes people who come in while I'm not here, but I don't like that very much.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
I have an 8port KVM and overhead baskets full of components in my bedroom.
One CRT isn't going to cut it. Get a second LCD mounted up on the wall. That much space, you likely want to watch more than one thing at a time and a switch box is frustrating.
.).
An old laptop with floppy drive (and a burner if you want to get fancy). Nothing is more irritating than having to walk back and forth for bios, drivers, and whatnot to put on floppies at your desk . . . There's always something you want to lookup online or download to use on your hardware.
Easily accessible tools. Not bins. Not a toolbox under the bench. A nice set of phillips and flatheads, maybe a couple needle nose just there on the wall. (Paint them fluorescent orange or something so they dont walk away if you want). Those all-in-one tool cases with their plastic snapin holders are not conducive to putting things away right.
An assortment of 'known good' parts in easy to get to bins doesn't hurt. And a nice sorted variety of screws is always good (I don't know what they do with them, but people seem to like hording backplanes and their screws . .
Easy to reach canned air. Easy to reach paper towels.
Just like the BOFH! In him we trust... http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/08/11/802_11bofh /
I tried to think of a good sig, and this wasn't it.
Or possibly some beautiful Watermelon Art from the same talented guy...
Get a free iPod Nano 4GB!
IMHO, nothing helps more with diagnosing hardware problems than some tested hardware (video card, processor, RAM). Makes isolating a problem or conflict dead easy.
15 inches... How do you survive man?
Spring for a new monitor or two. They are cheap and well worth it. You have plenty of desk space and your eyes will thank you.
With a desk 4 feet across, you cannot reach stuff on the far side without standing up. (assume you are less than 6 feet tall.)
vajk
Anything else is optional.
Two more 4 port KVMs would then fit right in. Wall mount those as well. Keep as much bench top space as you can free. The overhead bins are a GREAT idea.
Also several drawers running along the front. Norm (New Yankee Workshop) has a plan for a storage/workbench that would adapt really well for your requirements. Flush mount the power outlets (double the amount you think you will ever need) either to the bench surface or the wall. Beware static! ;-)
its funny how much spare time i end up having to browse /. and such when i'm on business trips and working at the data center at 3am waiting for installs to finish or machines to boot
BTW, check out the Xcelite PRO-SERIES ergo screwdrivers (model #XPE500 for the 5 piece). I love these things -- using quality German made handtools is really satisfying. I think I paid $25 at Fry's.
Anti-static pad, LCD on a movable arm, compressed air, spare screws (there are always some missing), power strip mounted on the work surface.
In random order:
1. Something to remove dust from the computers' inside and from the workbench (compressed air, vacuum cleaner, both...)
2. Voltmeter
3. Spare PSU
4. Air conditioning (posibly in conjunction with 1)
5. Trash bin
R Tape loading error, 0:1
Not quite related, but my bench is hand made, stands 43" high in a "L" shape, conforming to the layout of my single-car garage. I've got a kegerator in the corner, with the tap mounted 2' from my main PC's keyboard. Also have a 29" tv mounted bar-style in the corner, angled down with an Xbox and PS2 and a 5-disk DVD player attached.
:)
e /DSCN2545.jpg
:) Lemme know what ya all think, and if you're even in the SD area, look me up and I'll pour ya a pint.
My "console" consists o my main PC, an WinXP machine on an Intel 540 with Raptors in Raid-0 and 2Gb Ramm in the center, with a 2Ghz Dell laptop on the left and a 2.4 Ghz Fed Core server on the right, all controlled via Synergy.
The "L" is 6' by 34" on one leg and 8' by 34" on the other, along the wall. The wall portion is designed to fold down via gate hinges and gas shocks (not installed yet...it's heavy)in case I need to actually get a car in here.
My Fed Core tower has external, front-mounted IDE and Molex connectors, and it and the WinXP pc use LCD's to save on desk space. I've got a 2'6" rack box with nothin in it at the momment but plan to add sound gear and maybe a blade server of some sort when the fundage comes.
The workbench surface itself is white laminated 5/8's inch particle board stock which works great for optical mice. I wired in a 12-outlet power strip along the short wall and another 2-outlet box in the middle of the long wall.
It's quite cozy in here and I love having all this surface to work on whether standing or sitting on my barstools. And currently, I have Pyramid Heffe on tap which doesn't hurt either. Here's a link for a pic:
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y41/testbenchdud
Hope you all like. I know it's kinda off-topic, but I do have a full range of miniature/microminiature solder repair equipment availible to repair PCB's and such.
There is simply too much glass..
A loose power supply. One that you can actually switch on without a mainboard attached. Very conveniant to get that forgotten CD/DVD out the drive, or to test drives.
Probably SuSE or another flavor with a large hardware support kernel right out of the box. Makes testing for hardware bugs days faster. Just mount the disk to the bench. Maybe a disk per interface type (ATA/SATA/SCSI).
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
A Beowulf Cluster of Ipod Nano's. They're so cute!
-Standalone ADSL (ie not connected to the work network/firewall) to allow you to pull down drivers/updates/apps
-Mini toolbox & multimeter (depending how much you get into hardware repair)
-spare *working* parts to help the process of elimination with faulty hardware.
-Cans of air to clean parts
-Second monitor/keyboard/mouse so you can work on two separate projects without have to muck around with a KVM
http://www.frenchgeek.com/
Where's your 'scope? How do you expect clients and the boss to take your seriously without a scope and pretty rotating lisajous patterns?
-speakers
-dvi lcd (if the customer is complaining of a DVI problem, you'll need this)
-spare PSU(s)
-jumpers
-Y power splitters
-hard drives (pata, sata, various scsi if you got em)
-hi-speed usb device (to test usb)
-network connections (firewalled into its own DMZ, you don't want the customers wormed out pcs running wild behind your firewall)
-cordless drill and charger
-solder kit, heatshrink tubing
-all the standard various screws computers come with
-lots of outlets on a circuit supporting enough amperage to really use them
probly lots i'm forgetting, but it's a start.
"The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw."
what's your point? I still check /. every day and there seems to be no dearth in the amount of respones to any given thread... Nice troll. Also, way to have nothing anything remotely constructive to add to this thread.
There is simply too much glass..
halogen lamp, mini mag w/headstrap, a kvm w/audio, 17" lcd, antistatic wrist band/mat, port 80 card, network switch & cables, mini vacuum cleaner, brush, toy credit card for scraping paste, isopropyl alcohol, thermal paste, spare known good psu, psu tester, spare 256mb ddr, swabs, usb to ata adapter hooked to a dvd-rom, intellimouse explorer, cheap 104 kb, cobbled together microatx w/mobile rack & a huge hd filled with software & patches, various cds, buttload of demagnetized screwdrivers, tweezers, and a bucket filled with screws jumpers cables and header connectors. and a bunch more stuff in drawers.
An engineer who works for free.
In my previous tech job, we moved offices a few times and each time we planned KVM's, tool racks, spares, places to put 'work in progress' machines etc.. but it didn't matter. Within a few months tools get left lying around (or missing), machines were scattered everywhere and the whole system was in disarray.
:D
:)
I don't think we were just lazy - virtually every single tech outfit i've ever visited ends up going the same way. Its just the way of techies!
So save your time now.. don't bother.. just leave some empty tables to work on and let whatever chaos that will inevitable ensue, happen!
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
That's all that comes to mind just now.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Get rid of the KVM. 4 monitors (flat panels if you need the space, CRTs if you cant spare the cost) + 4 keyboards and mice are *so* much easier to deal with when you are working on more than one machine at a time. Add a USB keyboard and mouse as well, because you will undoubtedly encounter more than a few systems that will require them.
Second; set up a network that is isolated from your company's main network. This is so that any infected PCs would not be able to spread the virus/worm/etc to the other machines in your office. Ideally, this network would have its own external IP, as well as a strict firewall (Slackware running on a cheap 2-NIC PC has always done the trick for me, but YMMV). You will probably need a fileserver on this network (for hosting patches, AV installs, anti-spyware tools, windows upgrades, etc) running some flavor of Linux or Unix.
Lastly; Anti-static mats over the entire bench. Nothing is worse than having to call up a customer to tell them you accidentally fried their video card.
Rule 1, you can never have enough bench space. Get more of it.
Without knowing exactly how much business you're doing, I'd look at fitting out with the following:
- 4 x 17" CRT monitors. KVM's are nice and all, but there will be occasions they're just too painful to bugger around with.
- Magnetic screwdriver set. Phillips, flathead and hex.
- A good cordless drill. These do come in handy.
- Assorted cable ties. I don't know about you but I'm fussy with my cable work in PC's, gotta keep things neat and a bunch of clear cable ties are a good way to start.
- A day planner for the tech. Also, make sure he / she / you actually use it. It sounds like management speak, but they work well if you're as scatter-brained as I am.
- A radio, or something that makes some music. Don't make people work in silence if they don't want to. Dead silence drives me bonkers.
- Spindle of blank CD's and DVD's. Always keep a bunch of hand for backing up customers data they may or may not want. I made a habit out of backing up data even if people didn't ask for it. What the information is isn't any of your business, but there was a number of times people were quite thankful I'd backed their drive up and given it back to them in CD form as there was almost always something they forgot to get off before asking me to blow it all away.
- Cleaning products. Glass cleaner, some cloths. I've come across computers that I simply couldn't bring myself to touch, you need to provide cleaning materials because one day you'll get them too.
- Power splitters, laptop > ide adapters, USB floppy drive, etc... the usual stuff you never think you need until, well, you desperately need it.
A naked woman on a work bench - that's how real men get "the job" done :-)
Two or more good digital multimeters, one good O-scope, and a nice soldering station. A test system to test drives and memory is a must. Lose the CRT, switch to some flat panels. Nice screwdrivers only cost a little bit more, but your techs will appreciate them more. If you give them cheap tools that will break after a few months, the techs will get frustrated. Have at least two keyboards and mice on hand (1 USB set at least). Be sure to have a decent POST card on hand. I have seen them with PCI along one edge and ISA along the other edge. This helps point your techs in the right direction, and should help reduce time diagnosing.
"Fortunately, I'm adhering to a very strict drug regimen to keep my mind limber..."
across the AC to test the computer under brown-out and power surge conditions. (This is a joke for those of you who know what a variac is.)
And list of common BIOS POST codes. One of the best tools ever in the trade
please excuse my apathy
Shit boxes full of old cables, 386SX motherboards, 4M memory sticks, 14.4K modems, etc. Day-old coffee cups, half-full pop cans, overflowing ash trays, McDonalds wrappers...
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
buy a high quality digital multimeter, I recommend fluke, I have used them for 30 years and love 'em. a basic CRO is handy, but a CRO fast enough to work with modern computers is a waste of money. a Frequency counter is a better option. Serial port and ethernet tester. Good quality soldering tool, I like JBC, but we, the the service dept, also use basic Weller with the right tips, cheap and long lasting.
You can try buy cheap, but you need stuff that is good and accurate. We buy a lot of major top brand second-hand via eBay.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Garbage in, garbage out! A dedicated cleaning station with a good vaccuum set and supplies cordoned off from your workbench area would be a first stop for every computer that came in your place. Keep your workbench area clean with a dust bunny containment room!
a scantily-clad hoodcap-model.
Make sure you have a surge supressor and backup power supply.
Some things to consider -
1)KVMs with both VGA and DVI in, and a DVI out to a flat panel hanging on the wall behind the bench.
2) Big, scary Server PSU with a gazillion power connectors. Maybe two or three, and lots of extra molex connectors.
3) A universal notebook PSU with all the lead attachments. You know someone's gonna drop off a stinkpad and not leave their power brick.
4) A universal wall wart for powering troublesome peripherals that the owners neglected to bring the PSU for.
5) Multimeter
6) Nice soldering station, with adjustable temp and a variety of tips.
7) Big, honking USB drive for emergency backups.
8) Wireless Router with ethernet ports, and a gigabit hub to uplink to it, to test out networking ports, read Fark on company time.
9) Electrical tape in three colors, duct tape in two, gaffer's tape, superglue and a hot-glue gun.
10) Spare cables: USB in all its variations, ditto Firewire; Mini Din-8, DB9, DB25, Centronics and gender changers and adapters for all involved; PSU cords; Cat-5 patch cables, crossover cables; bluetooth mouse extenders, RJ-12 phone cords.
11) A n00b intern willing to go look for a bluetooth mouse extender cable.
12) A bluetooth mouse, to test bluetooth functionality.
13) Ordered bins with commonly needed hardware (plastic washers, mounting studs, screws, etc.)
14) Lotsa wireties in various sizes and colors.
15) Professional grade anti-static setup your technicians won't bother to use, all the while rubbing their shoes on wool sweaters and playing with styrofoam.
16: big magnifying glass on an articulated arm, preferable with a bright light.
17: Pin vise, and one of those aligator-clip armatures. And a real bench vise, too.
18: heat gun for heat-shrink connectors.
19) Locking toolboxes assigned to each tech, inventoried in the morning and at night. You'll save a ton of money on tools. What goes in those boxes is another post in and of itself.
SoupIsGood Food
no, seriously. why has no-one listed it?
Just kidding. In addition to above mentioned things, separate 12 V power source (home made) for fan testing, multimeter, small flashlight and huge copper CPU cooler as paperweight.
I'm not insane. My mother had me tested.
Open windows are much more cost effective than closed windows when you throw the crap out of it.
I dont think you can go wrong with the following:
-inverted microscope and good objectives, maybe phase contrast or differential interference
-single photon deep cooled fluorescence camera
-femtosecond laser, diode array etc for confocal microscopy
-fast digital CRO and waveform generator
-patch clamp amplifier
-good speakers, but no subwoofer, as it can cause blurring if you dont use an high quality air cusioned bench
im developing optical, live neuron based bio computers, so i also need a standard molecular bio bench, cell culture bench, electronics bench aswell, but they are more standard. hope this helps
going to a non standard custom bench size is silly.
chuck that CRT for a LCD on the wall, get the techs a small sized keyboard with a trackball integrated for even more space savings. we also mounted a small shelf 6 inches from the desk surface that is only 6 inches deep to hold the soldering and desoldering stations the digital VM/Oscope as well as the other test gear. one dedicated PC with their testing software, a digital storage scope app that can go to 2ghz as well as a digital VM card in it plus other utilities solved all the problems. (Pic programmer, eeprom programmer ets all in the PC)
pay less attention to desk space and more attention to upgrading your tech's equipment to something from this decade.
6X3 is an enormous space (it had better be an ESD surface!) that if equipped with the right tools and ergonomics works very well.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
While a kvm may sound like a grand idea, in practise it really isn't (or shouldn't be). When a system is busy scanning, installing, etc, you need know when its ready at a glance, anything else is wasting time. At our shop, we simply have a big 6-station bench. Each station has its own 15/17" CRT, keyboard, and mouse, and room for 1 or 2 towers.
* Britney Spears;
* A ball gag;
* 10 litres of chicken grease;
* A mop;
* 3 stainless steel sky hooks;
* 6 boxes of 4" holes;
* 2-3 cups of Hydrogen;
* Some HTML;
* A copy of the next edition of 'PCs for Dummies';
* (At least) 3 litres of green daylight; and
* A tube of dark matter.
How about a bigger monitor???
Wait a minute. I got it. You could play with your magic nose goblins.
I used to truly love my Klein screwdriver. There it is right on the home page. Sniff.
It made the Xcelite tools seem like toys.
Going by recent expierences expect to get a lot of cuts.
Cheap UK and US VPS
Install something around the edges to create a raised lip to stop screws and other small bits'n'bobs rolling off the bench and onto the floor
I wouldn't bother with having a massively deep bench, maybe 2 foot deep.
I'd wall-mount a couple of LCDs - nothing fancy of course.
I'd have wells for various screw types, so they were always on hand.
I'd have a bare component test bed, for component tests. Set it up with a working setup, then when you need to test a PSU, Motherboard, etc, just swap it into the working setup.
Around 10000 plug sockets and a wall mounted 4 port switch. Also a wall mounted KVM?
An area to queue up units for testing - a 'quick test' area and a 'long term repair' area too.
A set of wall-mounted optics for easy access to spirits.
A mini-fridge for various mixers for aforementioned spirits.
Compressed air tank for cleaning dust out of cases, fans, etc.
PS2 and USB keyboards. PS2 and USB mice. USB hub, Firewire hub.
Music system.
What on Earth do you want an e-meter on there for?
Be careful. People in masks cannot be trusted.
I have to say that one of the most useful things I've gotten my hands on in a long time is an IDE to USB cable. It saves tons of time hooking up drives that aren't able to boot for one reason or another for data extraction. All that slaving to another system and rebooting gets old real fast, but I end up working on quite a few laptops. I'd also reccomend a hard drive duplicator/maintainence station. As far as tools go, everyone has their favorite for one stop shopping, but I prefer the Swiss Army Cybertool. It's way more useful than the model with a USB drive, and has nearly every commonly used PC maintenance tool I need, including a pin for reset buttons. A bit bulky, but I wouldn't be without it in my pocket. I don't know what type of KVM you use (USB or PS2), but I would also reccomend keeping a genuine opposite, read not using adapters, keyboard and mouse handy. Typically, I use PS2, but every now and then I get a system like a Compaq iPaq (the desktop not handheld) that only has USB, and doesn't work well with adapted PS2 devices.
Wouldn't it bad to have a 'wooden working surface, thick and well waxed, oiled and polished'? A laminate surface would require much less attention, be easier to clean and would not leave wax and oil crap on customer computers.
'cause no one will bug you or interrupt you if they think you're insane.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
And it's bloody annoying.
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
Also, I *heard* through the grapevine that a supposed Geek Rescue cd is avaliable on some torrent sites. And i've also *heard* that what is on there is quite useful in many ways. I'm sure you already have a disk similar to this, but what i've *HEARD* about this cd is that it is pretty handy. ;P
we see things not as as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin
all techies need a fleshlight and ample porn
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I'd definitely agree with the USB key/CDs.
:-)
Much of the time spent fixing is in diagnosis. Having a selection of USB keys and CDs to boot into memcheck and Linux environments for analysis will be very useful. Also have a huge disk around with *everything* on it.
You'll need power. Lots of power. Put a few mains sockets on the wall, and get a couple of big computer power supplies screwed to the wall with extra-long cables. Just make sure you have a means to turn them on and off- modern power supplies can be a pain in this respect. On the ATX ones, I recall you ground pin 10 to turn it on... but check this!
I'd also say my Leatherman has fixed more than its fair share of VCRs and computers
http://blog.grcm.net/
A cordless drill is better than a screwdriver.
Other than the normal bits and pieces you already have, hopefully in bins what more do you need?
1) Leather wriststraps at the corners, make sure you get the 2" thick ones that are adjustable so you can get her really tight.
2) Use the overhead bins for scented oils in your favorite flavors and small items like clothes pins and anal probes for testing.
3) Hang a pot rack overhead for knives, whips, chains etc. It's a great turn on to have these things carressing her as she writhes in agony.
Wow, imagine a Beowolf cluster of these!
and you don't know what tools you need? :D
Padded floor (big rubber mats). Padded barstools.
A breadboard location. Eg, power supply on a wooden base with a strip of wood at one end to lift the motherboard so you can get cards plugged into it. kb/monitor/mouse for this location.
Hair dryer. If you suspect an intermittent heat problem, you can target it
Lots of light. swing arm lights, plus overhead.
Stereo system
Phone lines to test modems (what's a modem)
Fire extinguishers.
Lots of extra screws.
Magnetic and non magnetic pickup tools
don't worry about duplicating everything between stations, but DO duplicate the essentials. You don't need 4 volt meters, but everyone should know where ONE is.
A spot OUTSIDE the shop floor to open up computers for customers with questions. No customers in shop!
CRT's are right. LCD's suck for multiple res. I always liked having the CRT's up on a shelf at eye level.
this sig has been rated E for Everyone.
female strippers that is!
It used to be that repairing computers involved electronics knowledge. You would need to troubleshoot down to the chip level and replace the bad component. Motherboards back a couple decades cost upwards of $500 to $1000 depending. A well equiped bench would have Multimeter, Oscope, Logic probe, Chip tester, eprom programmer (bios upgrades),
Nowadays the motherboards (and most other pc components) use ASICs (aplication Specific Integrated Circuits). Even if you could troubleshoot down the that level replaceing them is very difficult (surface mount ICs mostly) and getting the parts just as tough. With motherboards costing only $80 to $200 it's not worth it. The one repair we still do is replacement of bad caps. These are a VERY common failure and are easy to spot (bulged tops). To unsolder these you will need a soldering station (irons don't get hot enough and aren't temp controlled) and a desoldering vacum station. The ground and PS PCB plains are so large they draw away mass amounts of heat when trieing desolder them. We generally have to use both the iron and the desoldering tool at the same time (one on the back of the baord, one on the front) in order to clean the cap lead holes. The caps? We get plenty of those from old/bad motherboards.
Power supplies are another thing we sometimes repair. The thing that most often fails is the fan. Like to MB's the caps can fail here to, however these are much easer to desolder.
A post diag card is helpfull to some degree but the best thing to have is lots of spare parts to swap. Old eqipment (486 and earler) is valuable for caps and fans. Allways salvage these parts before trashing.
I find most tech work these days involves not hardware repair but software repair. Most of our time is spent getting rid of spyware and viruses and fixing OS screwups (frequently reinstalling windows). The key here is to be able to work on several machines at once because you spend a lot of time waiting for things to happen (virus/spyware scans, os installs). Have at least three hookups for machines so you can work on three at once.
If you really want some test gear (machine that goes ping) for wow factor consider a used Oscope from ebay (~$100-$200). Analog is good enough here. I personally like HP test equipment here. You should be able to get a 100MHz or better scope for very little money. If nothing else they look impressive. A freind of my father used to have a sign in his office that read "If you can't dazzle them with brilance, baffle them with bullshit".
Plastic Pocket Protectors with full assortment of pencils and pens Alcohol with brushes
So irritated that I take another 30 seconds to vent my irritation.
Have plenty of Antivirus software availble that you can install and charge the client for.
USB Floppy Drive
USB NIC with XP recognized driver set
BART PE CD
Knoppix CD
350 Watt or greater ATX power supply
Digital Volt Meter
Paperclip
a grounding strap across the entire front of the workbench. Something you can touch whenever or lean into to disapate static.
Power screwstrippers should be outlawed for use on PCs. Horrible things. I never recommend a shop where I see them being used... The longest screw on a PC is about 6mm, and most are fine metric threads screwing into brass, aluminum or sheet metal.
Just make sure it can run OS X x86
Apparently you haven't studied the history of psychiatry.
Capitalism does not lead to corruption, lack of character does.
no work bench is complete without a stripper pole and a stripper to dance around it. Just my opinion anyway.
Don't forget those anti-static mats and wrist straps.
Ed Almos
The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws. - Tacitus, 56-120 A.D.
It saves those precious extra seconds when opening the case and keeps pesky users away.
The workshop was compact but the main repair bench had 12 "stations", 6 stations on each side opposite each other. They had keyboard trays underneath them, and all cables (IEC mains, RJ45 LAN, telephone, VGA, keyboard) came up from the bottom through a hole about 50cm inward in a bundle for each station.
;), etc).
This main bench was about 5 metres long.
Running down the middle of the table from end to the other was a narrow shelf raised up about 30cm above the work area. It was actually a "double" shelf, a second sheet of MBF was raised another 5cm above the first. This 5cm gap held most of the power cabling and LCD PSUs.
On top of the raised shelf sat 8x 15" LCDs - 6 down one side, and 2 on the opposite. One side was meant to be dedicated to desktop PCs, the other for laser printers and big 'ol servers.
Our "stuff storage" was actually under the table, assorted into 50cm squar(ish) plastic bins.
On a wall on the side of the bench that had the 6x LCDs, were the "in benches", which ran as long as the main bench. A whole wall with 4 levels of shelving. That was quite full a lot of the time... the out shelves were even bigger.
The main bench was not against any walls of the room, so you could all the way around it but both ends of the main repair bench had a "wall" capping them off extending from the floor to the roof that we hung stuff off of (USB ethernet dongles, 2.5" IDE adapters, useful CDROMs (Knoppix
Standing at the PC-repair side, the right-hand wall thing had yet another bench with a "station" - another 15" LCD, keyboard tray, LAN, etc. with a KVM that switched between four "wall-mounted" motherboards (fully functioning PCs - just with their bits screwed to the wall). These were used for testing faulty HDDs, antivirus scanning, data recovery, etc.
There was another workbench dedicated to building and configuring PCs, but it only had one 15" LCD, keyboard tray, etc. on a KVM that could switch between four different PCs being "run up" from new. It was kind of cramped and only useful for doing the software side of things... actually building PCs ended up being done on the main repair bench anyway, but at a pinch these were used when room was scarce and the situation urgent.
We also had compactuses, marvellous space efficient storage devices - shelves on tracks that can all slide up against each other or expended wherever you need to walk in and get something. These were used to hold components and cards and seldom-used things.
We had a POST probe, but it was only really useful for writing something intelligent on an RA form for faulty motherboards - by the time you're pulling out a POST probe, chances are that knowing the BIOS halts at "DRAM cache init fail" is not going to help you make a physical repair to the motherboard...
A word about the LAN at each repair station: We had cabling running to a linux box using a bunch of D-Link 4-port ethernet cards. I think we had a total of 14 10/100 ports on that thing. We set up each of the 8 repair bays that had an LCD and LAN on the main bench with its own subnet, and configured the firewall rules with fwbuilder. It worked great. I even set up transparent proxy caching with squid; although I had to create specific rules to allow the Microsoft Windows Updates to actually use the cache.
Why did we firewall each repair bay individually to its own little subnet? Because we didn't want customer's PCs infecting each other with worms... I tried running snort and mrtd with the server's screen set to tail -f the appropriate logs but found if there actually was worm activity going crazy on 2 or 3 stations, it ate up all the RAM and CPU and things would crawl to a halt.
Other LAN segments:
- one with the 4x wall mounted PCs and a couple of file servers
- one that had the 4x "new systems" bench stations and a couple of ports to our training room that was used for software trainings to our customers
- one that contained PCs related to the running of the business (POS, j
Don't forget the sledgehammer!!
13,545,370/807 = 16785 -- makes sense
16785/3 = 5595 -- wtf is this for?
You already used your "messages per account" number when dividing into the total number of messages, which (assuming 807 is the actual average number of posts per user) gives you the number of active users. So why do you then divide the result by 3? If you really want to work your "I have 3 accounts" value into your stupid-ass equations, try this:
13,545,370/2421 = 5594.9
5594.9 * 3 = 16784.8
Seriously, it does.
That said, my regular "tech bench" consists of a known-good CDROM, a *big* hard drive, a copy of BootIt NG which I use to make images of the "client"'s hard drives on said big hard drive before I go changing anything (yes, I could do it with Linux, but BootItNG is a lot easier in that respect, particularly if the host system doesn't support bootable CDs), a known-good PCI NIC and an Internet connection to use it with, a known-good modem, and a phone jack.
On the software side, I keep a copy of System Rescue CD (http://www.sysresccd.org/), which has MemTest+, Aida, FreeDOS, and a whole bunch of other bootdisks in its boot menu, as well as a bunch of really useful Linux tools such as gparted, QtParted, ClamAV, PartImage, etc..
Oh, and all the stuff that should be obvious: wrist straps, grounding strips (make sure they actually connect to a ground and aren't just a long strip of metal), etc..
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
As I am a tech at a local shop, one thing (or, in my case, the 2 things) I cannot do without are my dedicated testing machines. Here are the specs of the main machine:
Audio is turned off, no modem - just video, LAN and the controllers.
Shop-vac it about once every 3 months to keep it clean. Wipe and reload XP about every 6 months (it gets a bit messed up after cleaning a few hundred virus-ridden hard drives)
Age and treachery shall overcome youth and skill.
I worked for a company doing warranty repairs for some major brands. Other people have mainly listed all the essentials you need, but there is one thing we used a lot which I notice noone has mentioned - the Ultimate Boot CD. I won't go into detail what's on it, but one of the tools we used most were all the hard disk diagnostics tools from all the HD manufacturers. It also has partitioning tools, memtest, virus scanners, and other tools. And best of all, it's free and 100% legal! I recommend it for any PC repair shop as it has saved me and my colleagues a lot of time.
Personally I'd make sure there was a decent stack of old Playboys, Hustlers etc for those moments when internet access is unavailable.
Surely the best placed people to know what is needed are the people using these desks. They know what's missing, they know what's not used, they know what would make their life easier.
Powered by onion juice.
I forgot to mention each IEC mains cable and each power point on the main repair bench was powered through a "lifeguard" personal mains power safety box. Thing. Although the earth-leakage detection on most modern mains circuits installed into your building will cause a trip at a certain threshold current on their own, these "personal" mains safety boxes (usually aimed at tradesmen with power-tools at a building site, I think) are designed to have a much lower threshold current and hence the theory is, that in some cases, it should prevent you from being zapped as bad (or as long) as you would just depending on the mains breaker for the entire circuit in that room.
:-)
As for tooling: forgot to mention... we had another keyboard tray that was stowed conveniently under the new systems bench with cable test gear, mod connectors, and crimping tools along with some boxes of Cat-5e overhead on a shelf for quickly making cables on demand.
The rest of our tools were pretty basic... a few nifty magnetic gadgets and tweezers for removing lost screws in the bowels of some $5,000 printer, a few multimetres, we also had some specialised stuff for troubleshooting some customer sites that used RS485 multi-drop networks, a whole assortment of adapters and cables... but nothing that stands out except: known working common computer bits for when you need a sanity check
If you ask me, the worst part was getting the other techs to keep the tool kits clean, vaguely sorted and free of junk... I don't know how many times I had to go outside and hunt for needle-nose pliers or cripming tool in on the floor of one of the work vehicles!
On the rare occasions that you need them, some driver kits with the "weird" ends suitable for compaq, "security", and hex screws are extremely useful... keep in a safe place!
Really, I don't know which is more pathetic, the grandparent's sorry excuse of an "* is dying" troll or your failed attempt at correcting him.
No plastics. They can hold a static charge. They are hard, noisy and slippery. Shit dropped on 'em bounces and slides around, assuming it doesn't break.
Wood is quiet, shock absorbing, has a bit of friction to keep things in place and is antistatic.
Wood is safer and just plain more pleasant to work on.
An oil and wax surface gives it cleanability. I skip it where the customer will never see the surface, as it degrades some of the advantages of wood. A well oiled and waxed surface won't leave crap on anything. The downside is that requires a certain amount of maintenence.
Laminate surfaces are low maintenence. They suck at everything else, including their supposed sanitation advantage. I don't even like them in my kitchen. They're for people who think that translucent icons are an advance in GUI technology.
KFG
Heh. A couple arcade style game controllers should do you well...
OK seriously, CD rack/holders
Testbench? Personally we have a monitor, a keyboard and a mouse. Nothing too fancy.
On a good day there is space on that table for my beer.
He's including the AC posters (so remove half the 13,545,370 posts), so divide by 2 to give 7.25M
He's including accounts that are no longer active (so remove 3/4 of the rest). This gives under 2m, but we'll say 2m
Now, there's a difference between the MEDIAN and the AVERAGE. 1 active poster will make more posts than 100 mostly-inactive posters, so lets take me as a median for an active poster - +6000 posts (nowhere near some of the others, but wtf) - 2m/6k = 333 active posters.
Lets face it, when half your posting is done by a core group of less than 400 ...
Freezer Spray / Heat gun - for thermal stress Mantis scope - for magnification that doesn't make you go blind.
NOT A RECTANGULAR 12 x 4 bench of whatever it is they got, if you're starting from the ground up, more thought should have gone into it.
Allen keys
Network cable which attaches to your Test network, thereby allowing you to flash harddrives on the bench, system test etc (ie. something like Ultra-x) or flashier just get the whole quick-tech pro card.
Access to layout diagrams
Too busy to think what else.
technician on chain
Knoppix LiveCD for starters...
I ship a LiveCD that fits the customers usage with almost every pc I repair. Next call, I can check the hardware by having the customer boot the cd, sometimes can walk them through repairing the MBR.
Spread the Penguin
........Thta sounds alot worse than I thought.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
A vacuum - like a ShopVac - with a GOOD dust filter bag, and a GROUNDED, conductive intake nozzle - normal plastic nozzles are TERRIBLE ESD generators. A grounded nozzle to prevent zappage is a must. This way, instead of blowing OUT the dust bunnies and getting them all over, you can suck them up. You can also use this if you need to use a cut-off wheel to suck up the dust generated.
An electric (but NOT cordless - they always have just enough charge for all but three of the screws) electric screwdriver with torque control - that way you won't be stripping the screws out when you put them back in.
Ground mats, ground straps. wrist straps, a wrist strap checker (a little box you touch and it beeps if you have a proper 10Mohm resistance to ground - no beep, no ground. A red light turns on if you have too little resistance to ground to be safe.) A static discharging air blower (blows alternately positive and negatively charged air to dissipate charges on surfaces within a couple of seconds).
Dry shop air supply (i.e. NOT with oil in it) with GROUNDED blow-off nozzle. Use this ONLY IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE VACUUM!
ESD jackets - it does no good to be grounded if your shirt charges up to 50kV!
Network drop to a LOCAL server with updates for all the operating systems you will be using. Spare network cards and driver disks for systems which do not have network cards already.
Ice cube tray - for putting case screws and other small parts in as you remove them. If you get in the habit of always starting with one cup, putting all the screws from one stage of disassembly in that cup, then moving to the next, you will have a great deal easier time reassembling.
www.eFax.com are spammers
BAND-AIDS!!!!! What good is a brand new work bench if you are all woozy on the floor after a run in with a $10 case. =)
As a macintosh repair tech I probably have a little different spread of toys than many PC techs, but I suspect the basics will be much the same. Some items have been added after a moment of inspiration, and have made life a LOT easier.
* A parts caddy. One is a large caddy, and is full of parts of course. Start out with one at least twice as big as you think you'll need, then add a second one later when you run out of space.
* Another parts caddy. This should be a smaller one, with 36 small drawers. DO NOT put anything in this one, it's for service. This is a huge idea. When taking apart a laptop, each step of disassembly, pull out a drawer and put the parts/screws/etc in the drawer and set it on the bench to the side. Set them down in a row as you take apart the computer. This does three important things for you. First, it makes it unlikely that you will lose a part or try to put a screw in the wrong place. Second, you now have a distinct order in which to reassemble the computer so you don't put a panel back on and then realize you have to take it back off to attach a cable. Since you can't always count on having a service manual, especially for a laptop, this is very important. Third, all the parts for each assembly step are grouped together, which also helps prevent delays in reassembly and "hmm I have parts left over...". This is good for laptops and desktops, but the biggest benefit is really anytime you really have to tear something apart.
* KVM or similar switch, to switch video between your service monitor and up to 3 other VGA sources. USB switchbox to switch your keyboard between your service machine and up to thee other computers. Four VGA/USB combo cables to run around with. Number them, and number your switchbox positions. Some people opt for the "tap shift three times" KVMs, but I personally prefer the good ol pushbuttons.
* Tools. You can never have enough. I have particular need of my precision screwdriver set from Sears. It includes philips 0, 00, and 000 which are essential for laptops. It also comes with t5-t8 and small flatheads too. I also have a larger set of long handled philips 1 and 2, plus a set of large torx wrenches for t powermac g5's.
* multimeter. Doesn't have to be an expensive one. You need to test voltage (BIOS batteries, power supplies) and continuity (is that wire good?) $15 from radio shack is fine.
* firewire card in your service machine, and firewire enclosure, opened up, on your bench. This is for quick hookup and removal of drives for testing and repair, without having to reboot your machine. Another very "big idea", this will really help you. I *strongly* recommend a Granite Digital "FireView" bridge board, it has an LCD display and menu buttons and can be used to test a drive without even hooking it to a computer - extremely helpful and costs only about $100. Hard to find good diagnostic hardware of any type for that price. This will easily save you hours of frustration trying to track down a gremlin that ends up being a flakey or failing hard drive.
* air compressor, and a place to use it. (outside) You will be thankful for this when a machine comes in that looks like it was fresh dug up out of the ground. You'll see the worst ones at least twice a month, and they will send up a huge brown cloud when you first hit them with the air. Make sure it does not have a tool oiler in line, (yes, I've seen that done to a computer, once) and it would be better still if someone knew how to empty the water drain valve occasionally.
* cables and adapters. Like USB A-to-B, USB A-to-mini, firwire 6-6, 6-4, and 6-9. Parallel, maybe even some scsi (they come in handy from time to time). Serial, old and new style. Don't forget a DVI to VGA adapter (both ways!) because you will need them.
* floppy drives. Definitely need a 1.44mb usb floppy, and should also try to have a zip-100 if at all possible. Zip 250 is optional but good. DVD burner also manditory, for data backups. Anything else probabl
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Gah! Why hasn't someone mentioned it yet? You absolutely have to have a coffee maker. It comes right after the Knoppix disc but before the binary clock. Shoot, I'm standing at our bench on Knoppix with a coffee maker between the machine that I'm on and the one that I'm installing OpenBSD on. Coffee maker is definitely a must-have.
I report a shop that doesn't have them for poor H&S, causing RSI injuries for their staff due to cheapness.
Power screwstrippers should be outlawed for use on PCs.
Adjustable torque power screwdrivers are a must if you're going to be handling any decent volume. At the lowest torque setting, you'll have a hard time getting the screws tight, much less stripping them. You'd be more likely to strip the screws by hand. The amount of time you'll save using one is substantial -- particularly if the reverse switch is easy to operate one-handed. These tools will also cut down on discomfort that can occur from operating a manual screwdriver all day.
Double checking their answers while they fill out the questionaire before you start work on their PC?
From: http://lotl.cc/humor.xs
1. Describe your problem:
2. Now, describe the problem accurately:
3. Speculate wildly about the cause of the problem:
4. Problem Severity:
1. Minor __
2. Minor __
3. Minor __
4. Trivial __
5. Nature of the problem:
1. Locked Up __
2. Frozen __
3. Hung __
4. Strange Smell __
6. Is Your Computer Plugged In? Yes_____ No______
7. Is It Turned On? Yes_____ No_____
8. Have you tried to fix it yourself? Yes_____ No_____
9. Have you made it worse? Yes_____ No_____
10. Have you had a "friend" who "Knows all about computers" try to fix it for you? Yes_____ No_____
11. Did they make it worse? Yes_____ No_____
12. Have you read the manual? Yes_____ No_____
13. Are you sure you've read the manual? Yes_____ No_____
14. Are you absolutely certain you've read the manual? Yes_____ No_____
15. If you read the manual, do you think you understood it? Yes_____ No_____
16. If 'yes', then explain why you can't fix the problem yourself?
17. What were you doing with your computer at the time the problem occurred?
18. If you answered 'nothing' then explain why you were logged in?
19. Are you sure you aren't imagining the problem? Yes_____ No_____
20. Does the clock on your home VCR blink 12:00? Yes_____ What's a VCR? _____
21. Do you have a copy of 'PCs for Dummies'? Yes_____ No_____
22. Do you have any independent witnesses to the problem? Yes_____ No_____
23. Do you have any electronics products that DO work? Yes_____ No_____
24. Is there anyone else you could blame this problem on? Yes_____ No_____
25. Have you given the machine a good whack on the top? Yes_____ No_____
26. Is the machine on fire? Yes_____ No_____ Not Yet_____
27. Can you do something else instead of bothering me? Yes_____ No_____
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
1. Run a piece of angle iron along the front of the bench. Ground the angle iron with 10 or 12 awg wire. Touch this frequently and forget about those PITA straps. Or attach your strap to it if you're a paranoid numpty. ;)
2. Grab some anti-static mats. Screw them into your workbench. This will help you avoid scratching the customer's equipment, and if you ground them, further mitigate accidental ESD.
3. Make sure your floor isn't a friggin' carpet. If it is, lay some laminate floor over it.
4. A shelf for monitors. You want a monitor ever 3.5 feet or so.
5. A couple of "test beds", matching your most common configs. These are easy to make. Take the removable part of a case that the motherboard bolts up to, bolt a motherboard to it. Grab a piece of MDF. Bolt the case back to the MDF, and then bolt a harddrive, CD-ROM, and floppy disk to it. You can put this away and take it out easily, and it won't succomb to the "oh I'll just use this..." syndrome so easily.
6. A network jack and a phone jack for each monitor (or more).
7. An internet-connected PC with a floppy drive and a CD-Burner.
There, you'll all done. Assuming you have a shelf full of spares, you can fix anything -- safely and quickly.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
2. We have a couple external enclosures for HDDs, one for laptop drives and one for desktop drives, ATA and SATA. These are really handy for fast data recovery from corrupted or damaged drives.
3. USB keychain/thumb/jump/whateveryouwannacallthem drive. These are really handy for getting drivers from machine to machine.
4. A label maker. Or a Sharpie and tape. Something to label all the containers you're going to accumulate.
I support the FairTax www.fairtax.org
What we did is cut a rectangular hole in the bench, then flushmount thesed uctID=199 :)
http://www.tripplite.com/products/product.cfm?pro
vertically into the bench. You can never have enough power outlets, right?
You never know when you'll have to back up someones 40+gigs of pron. That'd take forever to backup to CD/DVD...
Not very scientific. Just because you have 3 accounts doesn't mean that everyone does. Just because you posted 2421 comments doesn't mean that that is the average.
No, seriously! Go to your local Staples, and buy a bag of those big, pink, school erasers.
They work WONDERS for cleaning contacts -- RAM contacts, AGP, PCI, etc.
I learned this from an electronics engineer. I've taken *MANY* RAM chips that failed memtest, cleaned them off with the eraser, put them back, and voila! Never seen again.
I don't know how it works or what it is that does it, but erasers remove corrosion from copper.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
Fascinating topic with lots of helpful posts. I have a light/magnifier on a compound swivel. The light is a fluorescent ring around an 8-inch diameter magnifier. Useful for delicate two-hand jobs. Useful for seeing "into" a box and reading mobo ids and switch settings. More comfortable than a head light and magnifier. Also have several anti-static mats (like shipped with some mobos) that I use to keep things steady and cushioned while they are worked on. It also works well to keep those one-of-a-kind screws from bouncing onto the floor. Also always have several small compartmented see-through boxes available. Use them to hold small parts, screws, etc. for each separate project.
An absolute necessity is a POST card or two. Instead of highly vendor dependent beep codes, suddenly you have an LCD readout with useful information.
Now, if only standard PCs supported serial console access to BIOS, boot loader, *and* OS....
- Oscilloscope
- Logic Analyzer
- Power Supply
- Function Generator
- DMM (Digital Multimeter)
Where I work there are 5 techs and everyone of course has a better idea. First what will the owner or boss allow, if cost is an issue. 90% of everything on my bench I purchased, the bench it's self I found in a back room full of junk, pulled it out and came in on my own time and put togather. My most important tool I feel is my data recovery system which is not more than a all in one Abit board mounted on a plywood board. Easy access to replace drives and even install pci cards if needed. I can not tell you how many times a week I use it to recover and or backup data from a customers computer or scan for virus's. It is mounted on my bench, above and out of the way. I bought the board and got a used cpu from the many junk systems we get stuck with every year. I went with the KV-80 model which has onboard everything including SATA. It runs Windows 2000 Pro for the OS and has an 80 gig hard drive, with a usb external backup drive. As for the rest of my tools, the usual diag Microscope 2000 and any other software I can find, multi meter, small set screw drivers Bench has on monitor with a 4 port KVM switch. Keyboard is mounter under the bench, so as to not take us space on the bench surface. One of our techs is a wiz at making CD bootable diag disk. I must admit, each bench here is different but each tech can work on 3 computers or more at a time, and it happens from time to time. So you can imagine our benchs are much bigger than the one you have.
when i used to to this for a living i used a ground strap when working on laptops. prior to that, maybe 1 in 15 i opened had some possible ESD damage. afterwards, none. it certainly doesn't happen everytime but sod's law says when you don't do it, if you work with enough sensitive components, something will die/degrade when you're working on it due to ESD.
Be a real tech: Use a Utilikilt (http://www.utilikilts.com/)
...that no one has said breasts?
Maybe /. is dying.
No incumbents, not no where, not no how.
Vote them out every term.
No computer tech bench would be complete without a ridiculously sized bucket of screws, completely unsorted, and filled up so high that they routinely spill over. At least that was the case with the three different stores where I've worked in the past.
Finance tutorials and more! Understandfinance
very smart. kills the static, also may kill you if you touch a hot rail in the PSU, or the PSU's faulty and shorting to ground. an ESD will ground you, but more importantly it WON'T PUT YOU IN THE GROUND if you get mains voltage between you and the earth due to the high resistance in the ESD lead.
-One 8 port switch or router so you either update your pc there or configure small network if it applies.
-screw containers
-tool rack for screwdriver (damn compaq)
-tie-raps by the thousand
-cofee was previously mentioned
-two or more power bars with wires already there so you dont always ahve to unwrap them from the new cases.
-wheels on your workbench with a removable power source so your not limited to that work area.
-One weird toy to say "hey it's my workplace"
-One list of thing you dont do
-Another list for things you do only if a 20$ bill accidentally fall into the specially designed drop box on the side of your workbench.
... 2 KVM, 2 19" LCD, wireless kb/mouse for KVM, ethernet hub, a small file server, cd server, a set of restore disks for whatever computers you use, ghost cds, knoppix cd, "drivers and utilities" cd, antistatic top, grounding strap connections, diagnostic equipment, etc
Shadus
I've found the following indispensable:
- USB NIC w/driver disc
- Wire cutters
- Bart PE disc
- Spare everythings
- USB Key
Suggestion for the cabling, run a power strip across the whole bench, and terminate it at a UPS.
Also for the net connections, run 3 cables per connection point
1)LAN
2) Internet(seperate from the lan)
3)telephone/modem
they'll come in handy
A phone headset really improved my productivity. Now I have both hands free and can wait while on hold and people find information and such.
LCDs have a tighter range of refresh rates they'll deal with. i discovered this when I used to build nforce2-based systems. during install of the graphics driver, they default to a refresh rate my philips 150P can't display. during original boot, they default to a refresh rate my crappy test monitor can't display. result? every build, I had to swap the monitor post driver install! it took me some time to work out the black screen post install wasn't actually a driver fault...
moral? if you go LCD, get one that supports as wide a range of refresh rates/resolutions as possible as otherwise you'll be lugging the CRT in regularly. for antistatic, get a benchtop grounding mat and permanently ground the whole shebang. it's cheap to do and *will* eventually save an expensive mishap.
Lots of paperclips. You will use them more than most other tools on your bench.
Also, a USB/Firewire drive enclosure is very helpful.
These toys allow you to take a 3.5" or a 2.5" drive and use it externally via USB or FireWire. It's been useful to me in my existance as a bench tech.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Perfect for reaching into dark recesses to retrieve dropped screws/nuts/whatever.
They can build up static so quick you'll kill more machines than you'd ever imagine! It's the dust moving across the hose builds up static charges quickly.
I have a monitor on a 2'x3' table. The table is covered in CDs/DVDs and other things. The computer goes flat on the living room floor and is hooked up to a KVM switch so I don't have to disconect my regular system. All power goes through a 10 plug surge protector I have.
That's about it. Any cables/screwdrivers/supplies I need I keep in two toatlockers in my room. It's worked for me for years.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Forgot about that. Will save you endless frustration when trying to remove/ change jumpers.
"I used to have that really cool,funny sig
Microsoft Security CD!
The e-meter is to audit the 'puter in order to get rid of the 'puter thetans. Masses of thetans stuck to it or themselves... Wogs call them dust bunnies... ;)
In high traffic areas, even if they are secure there are always those who admire fine tool and utilities. I always kept what I called decoy tools about on the bench while my good set of precision tools lay in a recessed drawer under the counter out of site of the passerbys. I have also always kept on of those small zipper case
for my personal faves.
1. Laptop
2. 10 port switch
3. JTAG debugger
4. Programmable power supply
5. HP Logic Analyzer that was probably made before I was born
6. Scope from the Ming Dynasty (the guys I work with like to hang on to old stuff)
I assume you already have this, but a lot of places don't:
A technician who knows WTF they're doing!!
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
amidiags ( yes i still like it) wireless connection, tools are a given, vacuum is a given, canned air or an air compressor is a given. perhaps a firewire bay on a tech pc that will take ide hard drives, mounted power strips, nav or something of the sort on the tech pc to do vrius scans over the network. known good hardware is a given. adjustable lamps is also a given. As far as monitors go, i'd have more than one if you have more than one tech working. KVMs are annoying. 17" lcds are what 220 bucks? if you are going to outfit the whole bench with whatever it is you want, why scrimp on what you'll be staring at most? Just make sure at least one of them has a digital connector on it for a mac, or at very least an adapter. oh and on the tech pc ( which should be very close to the bench, put a dvd burner to take images of customer machines. if i was your avg small business owner and brought a pc in, i'd be pretty pissed if joe computer monkey lost all my info because he wasnt grounded properly( this is a joke for all you grounding nazis) ... it wouldnt hurt to have a copy of ghost on hand for those repeat offenders... ( you could also charge to keep an image handy in the event they bring it back when they blow it up again.)
Knoppix being one of my favorites... It's simply priceless when that Windows HD won't boot, but Linux will mount the drive and allow you to copy all the customer's data off it. Also, the dmesg log and syslog show a LOT more about what's working or not than any Windows Event Log...
How about an oscilloscope?
At my last job when I got a couple freebie 20" CRT's, it completely changed my experience of fixing Macs.
Probably matters slightly less for PCs, due to safe mode being low res anyway, but for me it was like brushing my teeth with toothpaste instead of the dogshit I had been using.
I had some 15's and even an old 14" Applevision, it really sucked.
Do yourself a favor and go 19"+ on your CRT's/LCDs!
Good god man! After all these suggestions, am I the first one to suggest beer? I saw the minifridge posts, but for all I know that could be for some kind of hippie yogurt or something? What kind of world are we living in?
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
I usually have a UPS on my workbench. There is nothing worst than seeing your work disappear due to a 3 second power outage. Especially when you are almost at the end of that OS installation.
10lb Sledgehammer
Cutting Torch
Pipe Wrench (big one)
A 2ft length on water pipe
That will cure those "difficult" jobs/ customers.
If Kerry was the answer, it must have been a stupid question.
The UN - The largest "political" cause of death.
+1 fscking hilarious!!
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
A few known good motherboards mounted on plywood for component testing along with several varoious PSUs,
a USB external HD of a decent size for making backups of customer data,
a selection of known good internal wiring such as IDE cables, SATA cables, etc.,
a selection of known good ram for testing,
a burn in application that tests all low level components over an evening,
a wide selection of spyware and virus removal tools,
and most important of all; someone to act as the interface between the customers and the technitions - should be technically savy and infinitely patient, and be able to translate 'customer' to 'tech' and back again.
I always have one above my bench, but then again, I designed the poster and think it's both amusing and useful. Downloadable from http://www.debuggingrules.com/
"Debugging" by Dave Agans - the perfect gift for your favorite imperfect engineer.
this is a must for removing that nasty WinXP virus.
How about a copy of "USMA's Guide to the Use of the Metric System [SI edition]" each?
5. A common area with with a whole bunch of different ram testers.
It may be that I'm more budget-conscious than others, but I think ram testers are a load of crap. They're expensive and quickly become obsolete as new types of ram comes out.
A better solution, IMHO, is a couple known-good barebones PCs. For any modern computer you only need one supporting SDRAM and one supporting DDR. Neither machine needs a hard drive; just a bootable CD-Rom drive with a bootable memtest86 disk.
This setup also doubles as a generic parts tester; you can plug any pci card, hard drive, cd drive, etc. into these barebones machines to verify failure. I use an ultimate boot cd in each machine. It comes with memtest , hard drive diagnostic tools, and a bunch of other diagnostic apps.
One of these babies: http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/drives/6908/
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
I felt much the same until I fried a MUX board valued at $50k (this was in the early 90s). Some environments are just giant static generators. When dealing with high-price components: play it safe, unless you can afford to eat the loss. I do prefer ESD mats over straps, but I will still strap myself if I am working on something more critical than an expansion card or drive unit.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Your dedicated 15" is going to be a poor supporting cast member when a customer brings in a computer with their resolution set at 1280x1024. Get a 17" and you're set.
The Chronic *WHAT* les of Narnia!
Soldering iron, ionized water, sponge, tin, book-o-resistors, book-o-capacitors,breadboards, assorted gauge wire, a bin of crimpers, cutters, and strippers, a good-sized chest of random parts, a few good catalogs (in case you happen to destroy your building's electrical and absolutely must have a part by noon tomorrow), a cell phone (see above), a spectrum analyzer, a couple good scopes, a hammer, a rubbe mallet, at least 20 sizes of screw drivers, a dremmel, a larger dremmel, a corded drill, several networked computers with their data mirrored somewhere else on the network, a small generator....
Oh wait, you mean, what would I put on my bench? I currently don't have any glow in the dark thinking putty or nearly enough nerf guns. I'm also missing a mini fridge, though I do have a space heater (and a pentium 4 if it gets really cold).
Carpet the countertop, to prevent scratching peoples machines, and plenty of ice cube trays to organise different screws when taking a machine apart.
This too, will end.
Big monitors can display the higher resolutions- if you're powering up a machine that has its default video setting to 1600x1200- your 5 year old 15" monitor may not be able to display it- which leaves you without a display on a machine you're troubleshooting. In my last job, I had a really nice LCD (17") on my bench- it was great when it came to saving bench space, but it wouldn't display anything better than 1280x1024 and just kept a black screen (or a message that it couldn't display the image) if you tried to plug in a higher resolution. Which means... fiddling with the default resolution or finding the appropriate monitor and lugging it to your bench- both of which mean additional time.
Our tech bench is approximately 20 feet long. We put up a good solid shelf at about chin-level above the bench. On this shelf we have four LCD monitors each attached to a 2-port KVM switch. Every 6 feet or so we have a tower of drawers, each labeled appropriately with their contents (tools, software CDs, labeling kits, spare drives of various sorts, ribbon cables, spare keyboards, mice, power cables, network cables and just about anything else you can think you may need handy. At each monitor station, we have a 2-port network drop and a four outlet power wall-plate. Works pretty good but we ended up with too many "misc" drawers so I'd recommend reorganizing them once in a while.
But why is the rum gone?
You should probably have two monitors. KVMs are great, but they don't help you configure two computers at the same time. Spring for dual 15" LCDs with VGA input, should total $250 for both with shipping. Put KVMs on those. Have a large enough free area to have two computers disassembled, with a repositionable light nearby. Lots and lots of storage is a must, overhead or underneath, depending on the condition of your back. I'm sure you already have tools, but those are a must too, multiple sizes of philips, from teeny (laptops) to gigantic (IBM is fond of screws that could hold up a bridge), as well as a couple of standard head (IBM sometimes still uses em, plus they are good for prying), star shaped, and hex screwdrivers. Several pairs of pliers, thick ones for gripping and twisting and a pair of needle nose for more delicate work. I have actually found that a small hammer can be useful sometimes too (no, not in the way you think, sometimes a few gentle taps will dislodge stuck power supplies, CD drives, or case pannels). In terms of extra parts, you might want to stock a couple of sticks of RAM, PC100 or DDR400 depending on what kind of machines are in your buisness. A couple cheap 40 GB hard drives and 350W PSs are good, because most dead machines I see are because of bad RAM, HDs or PSs, or a combonation thereof.
Right, so after scrolling down a while and finding nothing on the actual topic of tools:
a lbum24/TEEPE_2X402S_TO_1_603CAP_TO_GROUND_SHOT2.pn g (should have a pair of very fine tipped soldering irons for re-work)
1) 2 metcal re-work stations
2) 2-3 rolls of solder, varying diameter
3) 2 bottles of liquid flux (someone will steal one)
4) IPA, swabs and cloth wipes
5) Machinist chest (small) loaded with the RightTools (TM) (ESD safe snips, strippers, pliers, etc.)
6) bin box for scrap devices and solder soaked wick for "proper" disposal
7) PC w/ 17" LCD, mounted on a swivel arm.
8) the kitchen sink.
other:
* One bench with an inspection microscope for taking nice pictures like this: http://xbx.networkboy.net/modules/gallery/albums/
* Community station with a Zyphertronics and low temp solder (you can recover and reuse the solder a couple times, feels chincy to do, but that shit is pricy)
* Solvent tank, if you can afford it and the OSHA regs, etc. Makes cleaning boards a breeze.
All the above is with re-work in mind, and if you need to do debug I highly suggest a seperate station or two with a good scope (I like Tek) and Logic analyzer, DMM (should have lots of these floating around any lab), etc.
If you want some pics of my bench setups for my lab let me know (email the admin of the site the pic came from).
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Linux CD's - Fedora of course including rescue CD.
;-)
WinXP SP2 and Win98SE CD's - sometimes we have to use Windows, and Win98SE makes a good boot CD for DOS firmware flashers.
USB key with my serials on them - it just seems easier to use text files than a load of sticky labels from CD cases. Also some example config files like xorg.conf and notes about how I've fixed Linux problems before, plus software I've written myself (always nice to test on a new platform) and the 'usual' stuff like wallpaper and some MP3's to test the audio with.
Acronis Drive Image 8 boot CD - will back up anything you throw at it, better than Ghost.
Ethernet cable - preferably linked to a switch to get to the fileserver and optionally the internet.
Screws - mainly drive and case types, plus motherboard risers and thumbscrews.
Magnetic Philips screwdriver - how many times have you dropped a screw in someplace unreachable by human hands and don't want to shake the whole case around to get it out?!
Cybertool Swiss Army Knife - for when you can't find the right screwdriver or you need to unscrew GFX card connectors or cut something.
80mm fans - I always seem to need to add these, cases never come with enough (usually 1-2).
Dremel - for cutting holes for fans, or trimming overly large drive bays, or emergency dental surgery
Fileserver - contains ISO's for various CD's and also rsync'ed updates made into a YUM server and storage space to image the new PC to (see Acronis above).
Warez - well not warez as such, but the hundreds of CD/DVD's you've filled with stuff you've downloaded over the years. You'll always find something you need that you can no longer download (like that 96Mb Abi Titmuss Lesbian WMV, oh what I wouldn't give for a peak at that one!)
Artic Silver 3 thermal paste - much better than that white crap they give you with retail CPU's.
Spare Realtek/3com ethernet cards - endless times I've found computers I'm fixing have dead or dodgey ethernet, or Linux doesn't support the onboard one. Same goes for graphics cards - always carry an old 2Mb S3 PCI card and an 8Mb ATI AGP card.
KVM is useful (if they have built-in cables, nothing's worse than trying to find that monitor extension cable!) so are dual input LCD's, but always have a spare CRT around for when the GFX card is trying to use a mode a 60Hz 1280x1024 LCD would not cope with.
Spare mice - Microsoft are the best, don't like USB mice, but I have found some motherboards that won't power down with PS/2. Also get a PS/2 keyboard not a USB one.
#include <sig.h>
Did a tour of CDW a couple of years ago. One of the things that impressed the hell out of me was that every tech bench (for the customization staff) had a mirrored back panel. Perfect for hooking up cables without turning the machine around. I couldn't believe I never thought of it.
Brilliant.
Poor means hoping the toothache goes away.
WTF? Why is this modded redundant? I mean, obviously everybody should be asking these questions anyway, but still... It should at least get a funny.
What! No ethernet connection to the internal service network? You can have an internal server with all the documentation/virus/spyware updates and drivers/BIOS updates* (especially for older hardware) you need. Plus PXE can come in handy with the newer MBs. Some of the older ones can use an NIC with a boot rom.
*Two pluses doing it this way (yes you still need to occasionally check the manufacturers site). One is when the main site is down. The other is when it's difficult to navigate. e.g. compaq/HP. Remember time is money.
Also don't forget to have an internal trouble-ticket/problem tracking setup. Usually manufacturer problems come as a run. e.g a particular series, or year. It's good to see if someone else ran into the same problem as you, and what they did. Especially in small shops that have a high rate of turnover.
When a computer doesn't work, tell someone to swap it for a spare from inventory and call in an RMA... who has time to muck around with hardware anymore?
One of those $150 cable testers that does USB, RJ, DB25, DB9, etc cables.
Ours looks like this one but has no manufacturer's ID on it, other than the marking "PC Cable Tester":
www.nudata.com/testers/pccabletester.htm
The single most useful bits of kit I use are a roll of masking tape and a marker pen. Great for keeping track of all that stuff on the bench, especially if there are multiple units.
If there are cables to be detached temporarily I always tag the ends first. For two reasons: sometimes I can't remember where to put them back, and if (later) I suspect they were in the wrong place, I can check.
Many good ideas here, I'll add a few of my favorite specialty tools: Antec PSU tester (~$15). Soyo Techaid post code diagnostic PCI card (~$20). USB NIC (many manyfacturers ($30) faster than opening the case on machines w/o a NIC, also good for diagnosing "is it the NIC or OS" issues. USB to ATA adaptor- connect client's hdd to bench machine fast for file retrieval/virus scan. (2) 2.5" to 3.5" hdd adaptor ($10)- connect/copy laptop drives with your bench gear. Ground mats, GOOD hand tools, extra hdds to clone disks before beginning work are also vital.
Right about the workbench... that is essential isn't it?
Speaking of something that no one has mentioned.
This poster and this site
Sometimes the most important tool is the one between your ears.
Natalie Portman pouring hot grits down my pants in 1999!
On the _other_ bench, I'd want a drill press, band saw, lathe, Dremel(TM) with all the accessories, a PCB milling machine (or a reasonable equivalent), and all the hand tools one would possibly need for homebrewing circuits.
Oh, and a good selection of electronic components. A _metric_shitload_ of electronic components.
Somewhere I'd want a computer w/ 17" monitor for automation and stuff, but, hey I'd rather design a bloody computer and build it from scratch as opposed to assembling and fixing the damn things ;P
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
-Possum Lodge Motto
Undoubtedly the most useful thing for fixing dead boxes is a USB / FW IDE interface that allows you to quickly slave up suspect disks and drag data off them in double-quick time.
If you are serious about having a REAL tech bench then you need one of these bad boys....
5 36882573/pd.html
http://www.home.agilent.com/USeng/nav/-536892327.
Otherwise how will you test your homebrew wifi antennas?
"it looks like crap. No way they're gonna sell that to a customer"
Is it that you don't know many salesmen or that you're trusting?
Computer manufacturers are shipping some PCs with no PS/2 ports, USB only, so make sure you get some USB KVM's. I would also recommend putting customer machines on a seperate network than any employee's machines, either physically or virtually. Oh, and be sure to get a candy machine that takes dollar bills, or else the "exact change only" light is gonna be lit on your soda machine more often than not.
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!
To be honest, one of the most usefull things i've had on my bench at times was a lazy susan. It's really nice to be able to spin your case around and work on any side of it, without any hassle.
1) If you're fixing used kit, start with a grounded extract line with a brush nozzle. It's way better than blowing dust all around the lab every time. Make sure the extract has a decent ground connection and test it regularly. Extract systems are very prone to static build-up.
2) A built in 500W power supply with resettable fuses in the DC lines. Under-spec power supply faults are b***ards to debug without a known clean PSU.
3) Separate area with big (16+ port) KVM for machines on soak test. That way they don't fill up half my bench and turn the lab into a sauna.
4) Lockable tool board above bench with spring clips for screwdrivers etc. That way I can lock my tools up when I go home.
5) Communal whiteboard
6) Anti-static matting on all benches. Anti-static flooring and ankle straps so we don't need wrist straps.
7) Large anti-static plastic boxes underneath bench for parts & cables. Small boxes on wall above bench for bolts, standoffs, fuses, etc.
8) As lots of people have already said - a turntable big enough to take a large PC.
9) Laptop with FDD, CD burner and Internet connection, locked to the bench so people don't keep strolling off with them.
10) Cupboard containing solvent cleaner, screen wipes, paper towel roll and foam cleaner.
11) Lockable cupboard for 'known good' parts. If you don't lock them up, they wander almost as fast as tools.
Just my thoughts,
Keith.
Never run a tech shop without these. They impress people with the need to wear antistatic strips, which you should buy in bulk and add-on sell to everyone who comes to the store.
I would have kits and cables to conect any disk to a very simple, test "box" SCSI, SATA, IDE (2.5" & 3.5"). including a PERC 3/DC (Dell RAID card) Box is in quotes because it would never actualy be closed.
:)
It should have a multiboot disk drive (Linux and a few other OSs.) a 2nd very large drive for dumping rescued data. A DVD/CD burner and DAT drive for returning rescued data to clients.
A small vacum cleaner and some canned air are esential (Broken computers tend to be dirty).
A set of Jewelers screwdrivers (For laptop work).
A Leatherman (look it up)
And last but not least; an anty static wrist strap.
PS: Ohh and a competent enginear.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
A thick hard rubber mat to prevent damaging droped parts and prevent scratching.
1.Live Linux distro of choice (Ubuntu & Knoppix are both good choices) for recovery as mentioned below many times. These are invaluable -- I also include a labeled Ubuntu Live disc w/ every consumer job I perform.
Winternals is not without it's merrit. Especially if you have a high volume of 2k/XP systems and are unfamiliar/uncomfortable with Linux.
2. USB keydrives. 1 GB's are very cheap now. No reason not to have a couple w/ at least one set up for quick boot/recovery on drive.
3. A larger monitor (as mentioned previously). 10-12 hours of staring at small screens makes me cranky. Even a 17" is a vast improvement (w/ minimal footprint increase).
4. Seperate workbenches are a must: I've got a similar small workbench (5x4x5) specifically set for hardware work. That bench is for nothing but hardware installs, soldering work, etc...
My second bench (a 7' table) is set up for installs, troubleshooting, etc... It has a small desk (actually, an old 80's industrial printer stand) with a 19" monitor, keyboard, mouse, KVM and a small 5-port linksys 10/100 hub (that ties into the main network). I am able to perform 4 simultaneous install jobs at once. Greatly reduces workload.
5. A dedicated fileserver is a good idea. All it takes is a single job where the client insists (and is ready to pay) to have 100-200 GB of data backed up, for you to realize that shuttling data around on 1 GB keydrives is for the birds.
6. An older laptop or SFF desktop (1GB P III, 512 MB Ram is more than enough... and very affordable via ebay -- less than $100 for a SFF Compaq Deskpro EN) for rolling out patches -- eliminates the necessity of burining weekly updates. This reduces network clog, and greatly lowers bandwidth requirements. You could pull double time w/ your file server... but I prefer for each piece of equipment to have a single dedicated purpose (not to mention, downtime is greatly reduced when one of your boxes goes down).
7. Creature comforts. Whatever those may be.
That last part may sound silly, but it isn't. All it takes is to get slammed w/ 7 or 8 straight 14 hour days and you'll soon realize that a handful of 15 minutes breaks with something enjoyable is a sanity keeper. As my shop has a LAN gaming center along with the PC sales and repairs, I have a 27" TV behind the counter attached to several old(er) consoles (Genesis, Saturn and a Dreamcast). It works with the overall theme of the business... and I really appreciate a quick button masher during crunch times. Along with this goes decent speakers for music, a small fridge, a pair of comfy slippers and a pair of sneakers for a quick 15 minute walk at some point in the day.
I'm sure you'll figure out more things as time goes by (specific tools, a third station for console repairs or custom builds, magic fingers vibrating bed, etc...) The biggest thing is to maximize your space and be comfortable in it. I cannot stress this enough. If you're not comfortable, you cannot make your clients comfortable -- and if they are not comfortable, they won't come back.
Anyway... good luck and congrats on the increase in business. Every time a friend of mine comes in to town he bitches and moans and looks at my little shop with envy in his eyes. He's always fond of saying... "Yeah, doing it on your own and not shoveling it for the man. You've got it made".
Meanwhile, he's raking it w/ a major player, benefits, and all the toys he cares to buy (like a nice new convy Jag). Ah well, I guess it always looks better from the other side. ;)
#SickNotWeak
I would have kits and cables to conect any disk to a very simple, test "box" SCSI, SATA, IDE (2.5" & 3.5"). including a PERC 3/DC (Dell RAID card) Box is in quotes because it would never actualy be closed.
:)
It should have a multiboot disk drive (Linux and a few other OSs.) a 2nd very large drive for dumping rescued data. A DVD/CD burner and DAT drive for returning rescued data to clients.
A small vacum cleaner and some canned air are esential (Broken computers tend to be dirty).
A set of Jewelers screwdrivers (For laptop work).
A Leatherman (look it up)
test motherboards that support the more common dimm formats. (Cheaper than a memory tester).
A stack of utility software like ghost and a Windows pasword hack utility.
And last but not least; an anty static wrist strap.
PS: Ohh and a competent enginear.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0375 702121/002-9908256-4490441?v=glance
Of course, his is a first edition =]
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
http://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~djc/asr/
The one tool that is really worth the investment is a service/toner vacuum cleaner.
These things rock at the part of computer repair that sucks the most (no phun), the cleaning.
You can use compressed air and clean out your shop every ten computers as you just spread dust around. (Also am I the only one who hasn`t masterd these enough to prevent them from blowing dust in your face?) You can used a normal vacuum cleaner and try to use the big bulky thing to clean out every little corner while risking sucking a vacuum between the mainboard and the case cousing it to bend and/or crack. These tonar cleaners have a flexible thin rubber nozle that fits between pci cards, hard disks well, everywhere.
Now that I googled one I realised how expensive these are, but the one I used was a leftover over from the copier repair days of someone.
Based on my experience with my benches at work, I'd say you've mostly got it down. But the two things I'd suggest you try to get in there are a 17" LCD and a high quality KVM , as it will see a lot of use. The LCD is less imperitive, but it's really nice when you're working with a large system or many computers and countertop realestate is at a premium. The KVM is a lot more imporant. Nothing is worse than a KVM that will blank out when you're going to one of the inputs. I've even had situations where computers would spontaneously reboot as soon as I switched over, because of a crappy KVM.
Choose wisely.
"I'm a Laver, not a Phyto[plankton]"
Microsoft just called, they said something about you performing a study for them.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
You got this one wrong.
27. Can you do something else instead of bothering me? Yes_____No one mentioned a humidy controlled dehumidifier. Some rooms are too humid for electronics to work properly. I bought a 50pint from sears for $200 with controls to set the humidity level and hourly power settings.
Haven't seen these ones mentioned yet and I love them. These are just samples not the exact model.
w -pick-up-tool
l
Flexible Claw Pick Up Tool
http://www.toolspot.co.uk/product/24-flexible-cla
Third Hand Clamp with Clips & Magnifier
http://www.ccsilver.com/supplies/tools/tools6.htm
A light on a flexible shaft is a good idea as well along with a mirror on an extending shaft.
As a small computer repair company that has seen enormous growth in the past few months, we are now looking to expand our facilities.
So its basically you then is it?
Well lets see, your going to want more than one monitor, more like three at least. One connected to a small cubby hole machine that you can use as a test device for external I/O ports and such, also for looking up information on the net and burning your CDs and floppies. You will want to make this a box that can masquerade and serve up some DHCP on your little techbench network. round off with a 5 port switch and some cable drops for power, net and the like.
The other two monitors are due to the fact you will only rarely have a single project going on at once, at the same time. Make sure you have cable extenders on your second two monitors, these are much esier to replace than the stock cables on your monitors when you bend the pins to hell.
Lots of lighting prefferably adjustable.
Since parts tend to be all over except where you want to find them, we have installed steel shelves to hold up largish rubbermade bins. The system is viewed as moderately successfull.
A multimeter, for looks and a logic probe just so you can use the words "logic probe" every once in a while.
Some wrist straps so that you can insist on people wearing them (the policy deters most people from touching things).
A CD rack or you will be always burning your tools and install disks.
Oh, make sure its a wood top on your bench. Nothing worse than a metal top techbench.
Thats all I can think of off the top of my head.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
'nuff said.
Every driver CD/disk that comes across my desk gets copied to another CD/disk and also copied to a driver folder on the network. I can't tell you how many times I've watched companies drop access to drivers and left me stranded...
...same goes for downloaded software -- always archive it!
Technically, one CRT may actually be enough.
For a while (before getting a LCD monitor a few months ago), I was working on two PCs with a dual input CRT. One touch of a front panel button toggled views easily. Great investment at the time (21" and cost $80 as "refurbished" at a show 3 years ago).
The two problems I had:
In the context of this topic, you'd use the secondary input to access some reference material and run even less risk of confusing the two sessions.
As for other tools, certain medical equipment is great for general electronics work. For example, I've got a bunch of surgical clamps that solve the problem of needing an extra hand to hold a loose wire in place when both of my own hands are occupied with the soldering tools.
This is not my sig.
Everyone has had great suggestions, there is really one thing I didn't see, and it is important. Zip ties, you can buy them in big packs at auto-parts stores, having a big selections of zip ties make it so easy to secure all your wiring.
This one hasn't been mentioned yet but of all the things typically found on test benches I'll add digital camera to the mix. Useful in a myriad of ways.
Need to identify on board chipsets buried in a box or difficult to read otherwise? Snap a pic in macro mode and zoom in on the interesting bits. I can do that in camera while doing internet searches for drivers, info, etc.
Need to remember where all the connectors went for case lights/power switches etc.? Same thing.
More convenient that writing things down or sketching things out in many situations.
I also use it to record things like physical damage or general condition in case questions arise later. Or screen shots of bios information...
Also use it to record serial numbers, license keys etc. Works great for reloading OS like XP where the serno is stickered on the back/side of the computer.
And it works well for onsite physical inventory or record keeping of work performed and so on.
In many cases using a camera is much faster, flexible, less error prone and more convenient generally than jotting down notes.
Nor do you need a large megapixel fully featured expensive model for such work. 2 to 4 megapixels are plenty. A nice performing macro mode, flash and generous LCD are desireable. At the moment mine is a Canon A75 but just about anything on the low end from Canon or Nikon could be recommended although many others would be found equally suitable I'm sure. If you happen to have a better camera, use it.
Recommended.
And, while RTFM (Questions 12-16) is funny and all, have any of you ever SEEN a manual worth its weight in pennies recently. Most manuals I've gotten with computers extend as far as "put the thing with the three metal prongs on the end into the wall." That's not much help when the hard drive crashes or the BIOS battery dies. I usually recycle them the first time my electronic device boots into a functional OS.
... grumble, grumble, grumble, mutter, mutter, Millenium... Hand... Shrimp, I tol' 'em, I tol' 'em.
No, seriously, dental picks. Absolutely the best tool to unstick fans, lever CPU's and chips out of their sockets, retrieve tiny screws and parts wedged in crevices, the list goes on. Probably the tool I turn to most.
Another essential is a long T-15 Torx screwdriver. With it, you can disassemble any Tier 1 box really really quickly. Ever try to change a board in a Compaq without one? Can't be done.
Several known good crossover cables, you gotta have'em. Why dick around with a hub or a switch?
Fish tape , and a very long highly flexible pole (fishing rods work good) for running Cat5 in a plenum. Essential. With the rod alone, it cuts your time to run the cable by at least half, as well as the number of ceiling tiles you have to remove by half
Finally, a good hardware troubleshooting kit
hth
Back when I'd primarily work on a bench with a wall behind it (as opposed to relatively-free-standing like I do now) I would always keep a mirror at the back of the bench, standing up and facing me.
This is to counter the effects of J!mmy's Rule: "The interface ports you can't see are not where your fingers remember them being."
-- often wrong; never in doubt
dont forget all the zip ties! they are always imporatnt..and a good trash can withing reach(not 1 large one per shop...get one below or beside each bench, and on hanging on the wall a damp cloth(how many times have you gotten something in your eyes, mouth and your fingers are coated with 3" of dust from the customers case..) and last but not least walkie talkies..that way you rguy in teh front can talk with your guys in tha back without having to leave the customer...leaving customers alone is bad..unless it something that needs to be said privately, get an intercom or walkietalkie systems...als oyou gotta get your techs some tunes...build in radios or allow employees uses of ipods or something. most of the times they aremuch happier !
~~"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." ~~Dennis Miller
I've fixed more computers with two things:
1) a knoppix live cd
2) an external drive bay
the drive bay used to hold a cd burner till the drive died. now i leave the guts showing, but I am able to swap out any kind of IDE device that i like depending on the situation. its great for recovering data quickly or cloning drives.
You read a lot of BOFH don't you?
I guess the question is: Doesn't everybody?
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
I use the Cybertool from Victorinox, and rarely reach for another tool.
a tegory=doityourself&product=54919&
http://www.swissarmy.com/MultiTools/Product.htm?c
I like the smaller one (model 29) because it lives in my pocket all the time.
Additionally, how do you have a growing repair shop with the price of modern computers?
Do as much of that stuff remotely as possible. Mom, Dad, Grandma, Auntie, have all fell in love with that program and my time.
Bawls. Lots of Bawls. And ditch the CRT, man. It takes up a lot of room that could be used for Bawls. The KVM is a good idea, as it lets you toggle between systems without having to put down the Bawls you are drinking. Make sure you have a good sturdy shelf to store the empties, too.
"Apparatus dignosco occultus, satis non supernus."
I work a computer store, here are the things on every test bench:
4 port KVM
grounded mats (some still have the grounding wires attached to them!
lots of power bars
1 19" LCD monitor hooked up to said KVM
knoppix (and ubuntu live CD)
In general use:
1 psu tester
a couple psu's
air compressor
vacuum
multimetre
2x putty knife (one large, one small)
dozen copies of ToolStar and Microscope
IBM IDE Hard Drive test diskett
1x USB floppy drive
copies of all windows versions (including 11-in-1 windows DVD, and windows XP super cd's)
why do we have no extra psu's, ram, hdd's etc? Well, it is because we do mostly laptop work. We have about 150+ laptops in for repair at any one time. If you need ram, steal it from one other laptop. Need an AC adapter? Have the client bring in their own. If it dosnt charge, multimetre the adapter, if the adapter works, new motherboard. Dim screen? FL inverter. Use a multimetre to test it.
Oh, and cabinets. LOTS of cabinets and shelving. We have too many computers, we have a bin allocation for "floor", and "on top of cabinets" where we stack things.
A External USB 2.0 HDD enclosure (i like the startech one because its internal design is resistant to abuse) can be used to plug any IDE disk into a system and bring it online for OS based testing or data recovery. you can also use it as a method for running a virus or spyware scan on a system who's own OS is too far gone to use effectively.
I have a SATA version as well on the bench in my tech shop.
- Better to speak your mind than to remain silent, or someone may speak for you.
I just had a frightening thought. The Troll blacklists both have 200 foes. Assuming that half the names on both lists are the same, this makes 300 troll accounts. The mods have marked me a troll above, so we can safely bet that there's 300/3 = 100 trolls on Slashdot. This also means that roughly one third of 333 active users are [tt]rolls. This number (1/3) corresponds to the signal-to-noise ratio according to AlterSlash.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
A calendar with bikini clad lovelies.
People keep mentioning multimeters, but I don't see how they can be useful if you don't have schematics. Are there any good references to figuring out electronics issues when it's a complex piece of equipment and you don't have schematics. I need to know where to start.
I'd love to learn electronics well. But, it almost seems to be a dying art with respect to individuals, though. I understand basic ohms law, capacitance, the math behind some of it, but when it comes to something that is already put together and doesn't have schematics, damnit I'm lost.
For example, I have a set of 5.1 computer speakers I can work on first. I can see the cap that blew. But how do I know that isn't a symptom of some other issue elsewhere in the system.
Or in a computer. How do you go through it and see anything useful? Or a radio or TV? It just seems impossible without schematics because you don't know the values you should be looking for or even when should those values appear on that circuit.
Keep spare screws! I can't count how often I've lost a screw while repairing a computer. Get the standard sizes; case screws, drive screws... Just keep a number of spares at hand. Also, get a telescoping magnet wand to retrieve anything that might fall behind the work bench.
One of my indispensible tools: the smallest-size needle-nosed ViseGrips. Great for removing round screws with stripped heads. Occasionally useful as a clamp or prying tool. (You know the motherboard is warped when you have to use visegrips to remove a Slot-1 CPU :)
Other oddities I've found useful, that are in my portable kit:
Dentist's mirror (good for checking jumpers without having to remove a cramped drive)
Magnifying lens that I can stick down into small spots (mine is just a lens salvaged from a big projector)
Twisty-ties (easier to redo than cable ties)
Very small plastic cocktail straw, or WD40 straw (for poking stuff out of small places)
Pipe cleaners (for getting gunk out of glued-together heatsink/fan arrangements)
Toothbrush (for removing stuck-on gunk)
Cap from a BIC Stic pen (the skinny part is good for stopping PSU fan when I need to check its spin-up, or to momentarily cut its noise to hear something else)
Rest of the BIC Stic pen (the point is just the right size for shorting between the power-on or reset pins, without having to fumble with the wiring harness, or poke 'em with a screwdriver that might touch Something Unexpected)
I do question magnetizing screwdrivers, tho. Do you really WANT a magnet poking around next to magnetically-sensitive equipment?
When I need to put a screw in some tiny place, I use one of those 3-prong screw extractor/pickup tools (three little bent wires that can be extended from a small plastic tube). It's not only good for picking screws up, it's good for starting them in spots too small for anything but a narrow tool. (Also for removing them the last couple turns, so they don't fall down inside the PC.)
Another indispensible "tool": a wooden plank, about 12x24 inches. Good for working on loose motherboards, as the small height is enough to let you put cards in the mobo without having to face it any particular direction. (Tho here I usually just drape it across an open case that's serving as the temporary power supply.) In my portable kit, I have a piece of heavy dull-surfaced cardboard that does the same job.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
so carry on, it's darwinism in action. if you have a faulty PSU, where, say, the live rail shorts to the case, and you're touching that case, you're in for a world of pain. it's not common, but it does happen and i prefer not to trust my health to some cheapo taiwanese PSU made by convicts. cheers.
you fail it for this one, i'm afraid.
Nobody knows what you need for your business better than you... I would say, if you have been in business for any lenth of time, you should know the tools you need, and the set up of your work space.. Better than the people here on /.
Maybe you need a business consultant?
Firewall off your test area. Viruses, worms, malware, irc, bots, etc. all want to get out and infect things, or will flood your network trying. Allow access to only the things the boxes need to see (windows update, antivirus/spyware, your local file server, etc). Block everything else, or at least be able to turn it off. Cache the updates and save bandwidth.
Log everything and watch the logs to see what the malware is trying to hit.
Ideally, use a managed switch and separate each port (or a few cheap routers) so that machines can't infect each other while they're connected.
I use Macs to up my productivity, so up yours Microsoft!
I am?!? Cool! It means I got that job *dance of joy* Though it is a bit strange that they called you not me... Are you pulling my leg?
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
It would be interesting to do a real study on the s/n ratio, and determine just how many users it takes to post half the logged-in comments.
I don't think anyone mentioned an air purifier. In addition to an air compressor and vaccuum for dust, I recommend an air purifier that runs 24/7. There is always dust in the air. This does a good job to collect the dust.
Another surprisely good tool is a cart with wheels that has a table top at waist height. The one I have is intended for use in the kitchen. You can spin it around. Very nice.
A peg board is nice for storage of wires.
I stick thumb tacks in the wall to hold CD's. Each thumb tack can hold about 5 CD's.
I also stick important documentation to the wall with thumbtacks.
A whiteboard is nice for discussion and planning. You can also write in giant letters that are visible from 10-20 feet away. Good for IP and MAC addresses.
A USB Nic can be pretty handy. If you ever have to get drivers and updates for a machine that doesn't have a nic, or doesn't have nic drivers it can save you some time. Also, have a phone line available to test a 56k modem. While they seem like a thing of the past, people still use them.
I am in the process of updating my workbench at work and am about to purchase one of these: http://www.ergoindemand.com/monitor_ceiling_mount_ duo.htm. This will allow one pole to come down in the center of the workbench and place 1 - 4 monitors on it that can be swiveled to the user. I am going to purchase 2 monitors for it and point one each direction from the center. Then each one will have a 4 port KVM switch.
The other thing I use often is a laptop ide to standard IDE adapter. This allows you to put a laptop hard drive in a fullsize computer which is very helpful for troubleshooting and ghosting since laptops usually have slower processors and offbrand nic's.
Used to have as many monitors as we could, partly because it meant you could more fluidly work on more than one machine at a time (some "repairs" just involved basic software re-install).
Plus at least 2 of every popular tool, because someone will always borrow one of them unexpectedly.
One or two bare-metal motherboards and PSU's -- basically a stock (tested!!) MB screwed onto a plank of wood with various spare cards (e.g USB, VGA, IDE) and cables (IDE, Floppy), &c. so that you could plug in a card, HDD, etc, into it to double-check it.
Plus, copies of Rescue/Install Floppies/CDs, etc. Though these were usually custom built for whatever task was appropriate.
These days, my tech-bench is the extra space at the end of my desk, but still consists of a spare monitor, couple of keyboards and mice, the tools, but also a seperate, reliable Linux PC, a LAN connection, a IDE-USB convertor and copies of Knoppix and Gentoo Install CDs -- for system rescue -- and a serial cable and a null-modem/serial-cross cable, cause I also work on Unix Server H/W a lot these days, and most of this type of gear has a serial-console.
From a few years spent tech-ing, I'd say there's no more frequently used tool than frosty Scotch tape. Rip off a couple of inches, bend over a bit at the end (for a handle) and you have a removable label. Stick it on the components you yank, and write on it with a Sharpie (felt-tip fine point marker). Bingo, no more confusion over which memory you have tested and which you haven't. Remove the labels when the job's done, or leave 'em on the dead bits so your junk pile is documented. When the user wants to see the dead part, you're so ORGANIZED, even your mom would be proud.
An early step is going to be visual inspection, so a small paint brush (to loosen the dust) and a vacuum (to remove it without putting your lungs at risk) are key. Get a jeweler's loupe. Seeing a scorch mark, a burn blister, or oozing capacitor is quicker than functional testing. In case of intermittent faults, ANYTHING is quicker than functional testing.
We used Wiremold brand power strips (with one AC socket per 6 inches) on the leading edge of an above-bench shelf, always accessible. That was nearly enough.
Keep some chemicals on hand; Caig Labs stuff for contact enhancement, methanol (or denatured ethanol) for most plastics, Windex (low-residue waterbase cleaner) for just about everything, threadlocker for hardware that isn't supposed to come loose, maybe MEK (lacquer thinner) to be applied with a small cotton swab away from plastic parts... And I presume any tech knows to have freeze mist and WD-40 and canned air (or a compressor and blowgun) around. Low-residue wetting agent (Kodak Photo-Flo) in few-drops-in-a-quart-of-water solution, and water soluble solder flux (apply with an artist's camel-hair brush) are useful. One odd item was brake fluid; it's formulated to be very friendly to rubber items, makes a great cleaner for rubber rollers and was VITAL in the old days with impact printers.
Waterless handcleaner and a toothbrush will brighten up a case. Work it in, then let sit a few minutes before you wipe up. For a smoker's computer monitor, I've done wonders with a tiny bit of lye in soapy water (not for the metal or electronic parts). Gives you something to do while listening for hard disk misbehavior.
Boxes or ashtrays or muffin tins for small parts, and a tool organizer/rack for all the most frequently used tools. Don't hide tools in a box unless they're used infrequently, or you need to drag 'em onsite.
Finally, we used a database to keep our notes, including the computer's serial number and customer contact info. It was a very fine way to look into the past history of a machine, and anyone who answered the phone could relay the job status after checking the database record.
Grounding has to be ABSENT when working on high voltage (monitors or potentially backlights for LCDs), so the 'put grounding mats everywhere' approach is flawed. Keep ground straps around, and when reseating RAM use at least the left-hand-on-chassis precaution. No real need to be anal about it. While MOS inputs are sensitive, there are some ameliorating circumstances:
(1) except for RAM and CPUs, the removable parts of a computer have I/O pins (with both a MOS input and a transistor OUTPUT connected together) and that means very little sensitivity to static. Video cards from the plastic bins at generic-salvage-mart usually work fine.
(2) since the 1970s when static charge clobbered lots of expensive hardware, the manufacturers have learned to protect their products. It's normal to pass a 2000V static test (but they still don't recommend it).
(3) many materials (cardboard, real wood, most kinds of paint) are static dissipative anyhow, and the exceptions (shoe soles, nylon carpet) react well to some coatings (spray-on Downy fabric softener is a common recommendation). Here in Seattle, we have humidity which helps, too.
When a CDROM is packed in a sleeve with an antistatic precaution label on it, you KNOW something is over-the-top in the warnings about static. It's like the magnet I bought, that had a little pamphlet explaining it should always be used with eye protection... Electronic parts suppliers put warnings everywhere about static, just like machine tool suppliers put warnings everywhere about eyeshields. Those warnings often exceed the underlying dangers.
I work at a computer store as a technician. We do all kinds of upgrades, installs, maintenance, etc. We have 4 test benches setup with 15", 17" and 19" monitors. Each bench has a keyboard, optical mouse, IEC power cable, phone line cable, network cable and speakers all bound together with plastic tubing.
:D
We also run a Windows (yes, everyone uses it - lets face it) server running XP with a large HDD in it. Removable rack ready for a customer's HDD and a DVD burner so we can backup customer's data before a reload.
We have a central place for all our tools hung up on the wall.
Hope this helps alot
You moved your mouse. Please restart Windows for changes to take effect.
We service about 3-4 PCs a day where i work, 2 main techs and an extra (omg, our manager actually does work here :) ) this is the setup
:)
:)
:)
3 benches
CRTs
ps2 keyboards and MS optical mice
phone leads to each desk
net cable to each desk (10mb/s coz its all we got)
A super long cross over cable to our main rig (1Gb/s cat6)
3 cordless screwdrivers
1 multimeter
1 power supply "tester" with status lights for all rails
1 usb-ide box, with a dvd burner that sits near it all the time
on secondary bench we have crt and another ps2 rig, with 4port KVM, 1 phone lead, 2 lan cables
Software is something we pride ourselves on, we build all our new PCs on this desk too and use a DVD to install windows (quite a bit faster), same disk also has all drivers, programs, etc needed to setup, repair, reinstall a pc. Few coppies of knoppix floating around too
The usual bits go without saying of course, about 4 spare PSUs, 2-3 vid cards (pci, agp, pci-e), ram bucket
Goodluck with the redesign
...
1) A firewall configured to block access from the work bench to the rest of your network, but still allow it to the internet (optionally with site or rate limiting) for patches etc.
2) Ice Cube trays to hold the different sized small screws in order from dissassembly of things like notebooks.
3) A small sized system connected to a wall mount LCD to read manuals from CD, PDFs or web HTML.
4) A POTS line for modems -Sadly still occasionally needed.
5) Large flash drive for holding critcal utilities, when the system won't read external media.
6) Cheat sheet for startup key shortcuts for various manufacturers & OS. Entering CMOS on an old gateway. Boot into open firmware on a Mac. Password recovery on a Cisco, etc.
7) A procedure and system to log actual time spent on the repair. Assuming that one is billing or accountable for their time.
8) The ability to process credit cards. This enables one to get a deposit BEFORE upgrading a machine that is too old to cost effectively upgrade.
9) A security system and procedures to minimise the possibility or your customers machines and data falling into someone elses hands.
I dont need a tech bench, I work in a lab!
....
I am a data recovery tech so beside me I have a cleanroom, on my desks (I have 3 desks in a horse-shoe) I have 6 PC's, a 4 port kvm, a 2 port KVM, a laptop, telephone, and a gazillion drives. Another bench I have a desoldering station + soldering iron + microscope, on another a mac and other junk, and then
Was standard feature in every TV shop I ever worked in. It allowed you to watch the screen while making adjustments or tapping around to find a loose connection. For repairs on a console set in a customer's home, we used a small mirror on a tripod placed in front of the set.
When working around 25,000 or so volts, you DON'T want to be reaching over the set to grope for a pot while watching the screen...
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
Don't forget a bunch of dixie cups. I find the small (3 oz) plastic ones work best. Keep em stacked up in a nook that will keep them from falling over.
What for? Easy: For parts. When you start taking something apart, put the bits in a dixie cup. When you move to the next level/layer/component, put a new cup in the old one. When you're done taking apart, put an empty cup in the top of the stack. Now you've got all the parts, in a nice neat stack, reasonably safe from spilling, at a cost so low it's almost free.
Yah, you can use those fancy bins and trays and stuff, but this is so much cheaper and can actually work better. Takes up less space, sometimes, too.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Whatever you do, do NOT use an air compressor like you would use with power tools and/or to fill a tire. You'll blow components off boards and blades off fans that way."
;-)
Bah! If it comes off, it must not have been very wall attached, and thus needed to be replaced anyway!
Seriously, at my last job as an IT whore (AKA "consultant"), we had a "closet" for cleaning dust. It had compressed air, but on an adjustable regulator so you could pick a real light flow for delicate stuff, or heavy for that baked-on dust. We also had a nice exhaust fan to suck it all outside. That worked out so well.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
People keep mentioning multimeters, but I don't see how they can be useful if you don't have schematics.
Power supply voltages. Is your +5V output from your power supply really 5V or is it 4.5V?
when it comes to something that is already put together and doesn't have schematics, damnit I'm lost.
So sit down and draw some schematics. That's what I did when my speedometer quit working. Eventually I traced the problem to a bad $0.20 rectifier diode, but being able to look at the signal flow on paper made it easier to understand what was going on.
But how do I know that isn't a symptom of some other issue elsewhere in the system.
It's had to know for sure, but a lot of the trick is knowing what the individual parts should look like (electrically) and how they tend to fail.
In your case I would guess three causes for the bad cap: Age, overvoltage, or reverse polartiry.
So next you sit there and think of what might cause overvoltage (bad regulator) or reverse polarity (no obvious choice.. maybe the wrong wall wart got plugged into it).
Or in a computer. How do you go through it and see anything useful? Or a radio or TV? It just seems impossible without schematics because you don't know the values you should be looking for or even when should those values appear on that circuit.
You know what the deivce is supposed to do and you have the numbers on the parts (usually). Learn to read values off resistors and capacitors and look up datasheets for other parts online.
For a basic intro I reccommend and of the books by Forrest Mims, especially "Getting Started in Electronics". Those books are generally very approachable.
Life is too short to proofread.
If you weren't aware of the many types of screwheads then you have not been reading /. with sufficient skepticism.
The serious lists of things needed on a tech bench that have been suggested are amazing!
/. archives last forever.
People differ significantly, but the overlap and original ideas for what makes it work for each individual should be saved...
I write software, but occassionally have to tinker with hardware, and I expect to return to this list a number of times...
I hope the
Thanks guys.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Lots of good tool tips in this old article at Tom's Hardware Guide:
. html
http://www6.tomshardware.com/howto/20020820/index
We reserve the right to serve refuse to anyone. -management
I wrote that.
LCD monitors (easier to move from bench to bench)
Multimeter
Extra sticks of GOOD memory
PS/2 mice and keyboards
ADB mice and keyboards
USB mice and keyboards
Crossover cables
10/100 Ethernet connection
Wireless network
Black & Decker cordless screwdriver (articulated w/Torx, hex, & conventional bits)
Jeweler's screwdriver sets (conventional and Torx)
Grounding strap
CRT discharge kit
Mac OS disks from 7.1 to Tiger
Apple Diagnostic Disk Set
Norton SystemWorks (latest)
TechTool Pro 4.0.5
OnyX
External FireWire/USB 2.0 DVD burner
External FireWire/USB 2.0 hard drive
WiebeTech IDE sleds (full-size and notebook)
IDE drive with bootable 9.2.2 and Mac OS X build installed
CD with draggable vanilla 9.2.2 System Folder
USB Key Drive
USB Wireless Adapter
USB PCI card
FireWire PCI card
Serial ATA PCI card
SCSI PCI card
SCSI terminator
External SCSI case
Spare video cards (PCI & AGP)
Screw organizer
Magnetic retriever
Claw retriever
Motherboard batteries
Well-lit loupe
Laptop w/wireless for Service Manual reference
Thermal grease/paste
Compressed air
Q-Tips
90% Isopropyl alcohol
Kapton tape
Macintosh G4 Sawtooth (great for rescuing HD's from dead machines and backing up the contents. I use these because they're well-built, provide easy access to the inside, and boot into OS 9. They're also good for restoring machines via Target Mode)
... which consists of a rabbit's foot, a magic wand, a crystal ball, and a hammer. A hand grenade is optional.
(from the Repair FAQ)
Most-used tool on our bench: Mini maglight flashlight (2-AA size). They come with a nylon holster, which can be easily attached to the bench.
a. Apple: That means you are a person who loves to eat apples
b. Banana: That means you are a person who loves to eat bananas
c. Strawberry: That means you are a person who loves to eat strawberries
d. Peach: That means you are a person who loves to eat peaches
e. Orange: That means you are a person who loves to eat oranges
--
Mod this down.
Mine is relatively spartan at the moment, as I'm lacking extra monitors to...well, monitor my planned cluster. Mostly, its just parts, sorted by type (Optical storage, Magnetic Storage, etc.), and a thingy for small bits like LEDs and screws.
;)
Mind you, mine doubles as a location to strip down seriously damaged PCs for their functional components
I worked as a tech years ago and when we moved the owner had three custom benches made. They were about 10' long and about 3' deep on either side so that you could have a tech working on each side. In the center there was a shelf about 2.5' up for monitors, and then up from that was another shelf for stuff. The riser in the middle had surge strips mounted on either side just above the main bench every foot or so. There were many points to attach a ground strap. These were excellent workspaces that made a great deal of difference. As far as stuff, a soldering iron, multimeter, lots of spare parts (boards, cables, screws, drives). We each supplied our own tools. Coffee pot near by, mini fridge, bottled water dispenser, tunes, small wharehouse nearby for all of the new equipment, equip. waiting to be repaired, and the stuff that was fixed. Computer for each tech with net access, etc. to write up tickets, look for symptoms on KB's, etc.
sig, what sig, am I supposed to have a sig? I don't want a sig. I don't need a sig.
Hammer Anvil Forge Workable Metal. You're going to need to work out your frustration somehow if you're fixing other peoples PCs. Why not do that in a productive way, and make a nice piece of Ironmongery.
Seriously, the compressed air is a must, but your work area will quickly become unbearably disgusting unless you have a small vacuum (dustbuster) for getting rid of the larger wads of hair and crap that are usually nested in machines 3+ years old.
A smallish "parts organizer" cabinet w/ removable drawers comes in handy, both for keeping track of small screws and such for the current project, as well as having a good assortment of extra odds-and-ends available. Get something with about twice as many drawers as you think you'll need - the empty ones fill up fast.
In 6 years of freelance PC repair, all I've ever needed for tools are the pretty obvious ones:
Screwdriver set, complete w/ torx bits, etc.
Soldering iron
KVM switch
Desk lamp
Large tweezers and/or small needle-nose pliers
Knoppix CD
A decent (~1.2GHz) mid-range test box with removable HD trays and CD/DVD burner
o 1 Sig beneath your current threshold