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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?"
IMHO, nothing helps more with diagnosing hardware problems than some tested hardware (video card, processor, RAM). Makes isolating a problem or conflict dead easy.
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
Another easily accessable computer. Sometimes you just need to google to see if a company's driver causes problems.
A completely naked computer that has been optimized for quick booting (a CF-system, perhaps?). Either way, a quick and easy way to test parts for failure.
Voltometer. Always good for testing parts for failure.
USB flash drive with all of your utilities.
Linux boot floppies / CD's.
A wired rotary disk-cutting tool. These come in handy far, far more often then they should.
A Lazy Susan. I hate having to constantly turn machines around.
All of the assorted parts you need to put into computers... Things like spare case screws, spare PSU's, little rubber feet...
All of the assorted screw drivers, etc, that you need to fix computers, which i'm sure you have figured out by now.
A bin of dead parts for scrap. Sometimes you just really need a face pannel from a networking card. You'll figure out what the usful scavengable parts are pretty quickly.
A pen and a notepad, believe it or not.
The ______ Agenda