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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?"
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..
-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."
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.
That's all that comes to mind just now.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
You're right, spelling wise, but chose a bad way to make your point - espresso is Italian for "very quickly" :-)
A common misconception, but actually espresso is the past participle of esprimere, meaning to express or to press out, and relates to the process of making an espresso coffee.
sig under construction...
...and a coffee machine. Where would you be without good old Mr. Coffee?
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.
Don't lose the CRT. Make sure you have a good one, that can cope with a wide variety of resolutions and refresh rates - you never know what some idiot has set their screen resolution to (and wants it left at because they like it), and LCDs are a complete pain to look at if you are not feeding them their native resolution.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
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.
we see things not as as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin
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".
That's a good list, might I add afew small things.
The alcohol prep pads that hospitals use. I usually buy them at home health places cheaply. Bottles of rubbing alchool with q tips and swabs. And lastly, those large anti-bacterial computer/equipment wipes.
I hate starting on a case that's covered in tar because their owner smokes. That's bare min an additional $25 fee if I have to wipe the computer down to work on it.
I also keep assorted fly swatters/heavy hand held objects to squash anything that tried to crawl out of a case when I open it. On that note, I keep large clear plastic garbage bags on hand. These are used in alot of factories as liner's for 55 gallon drums. If something does crawl out of the computer, the computer and any assoicated parts go into a bag, the bag is tied shut, and a zip tie is affixed below the knot in the bag. Then the owner is called to come pick up their computer.
"Does your computer have IP on it?"
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
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
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.
The essential I couldn't do without:
A good quality multimeter, and a large lighted magnifying glass. . So many problems can be traced and solved with that. Doesn't hurt to have an exacto knife and some copper tape as well, depending on the exact type of repair work you do (I can salvage some boards and cards this way, though its patient work).
Freedom is merely privilege extended unless enjoyed by one and all.
1. Ability to make coffee: insinkerator hot water tap (replaced our bunson burner and fleaker.) We still use a glass funnel with coffee filters. Fresh grind and then pour 190 deg F water over them in a careful method. Perfect concentrated brew.
2. Multimeter. *vital*.... never leave home without it.
3. Complete screwdriver/torx set.
4. Spare towles for laptop disembowlment operations.
5. Stack of "fresh" drives. Never trust an old drive!
6. Rubermaid container full of untouched, pristine, NIB IDE cables. Another must have. I tend to swap out IDE cables when ever I get a box just in case. It's saved me a lot of problems.
7. Trusted powerspuplies.
8. iPod hooked to sony stereo system.
9. KVM.
10. 19" LCD Samsung 930b + Sony trinitron E400.
11. Laptop cooling pad.
12. 7pt USB hub.
13. 8 pt netgear switch (home bench) and 24 pt gigabit switch (foundary) at work.
14. Safety gooooogles and electrical tape. (I guess for sledge-o-matic operations safety.) Must have my PPE's.
15. Swingline stapeler. (Not red.) Vintage.
16. TI-89.
17. Perrys Handbook for Chemical Engineers. (DOn't ask why I have it near my comp workbench.... you don't want to know.)
-=fshalor
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.
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
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!
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.
You've obviously got to have, screwdrivers, soldering iron, multimeter X 2, CD/DVD storage solution for install media, KVM, a bunch of angle-poise lights, ditch the CRT and get a couple of LCDs on the wall, (I still have a big CRT for photo editing but other than that I use LCDs) and a USB backup solution, I have an adaptec USB2 -> SCSI adapter and a DDS4 tape drive (except I can't find a SCSI 50 pin High Density (HD50) Female to Wide SCSI-3 High Density 68 (HD68) Male converter here so at the moment I have to drop in a PCI SCSI adapter) and it works a treat Bla Bla Bla...
I'd add to the standard kit, an LED torch or 2 (flashlight if you must) that takes AA batteries and is operated by a button on the back, taped to one or both (more comfortable) of the ear arms of some safety goggles or glasses frames, these have the advantage of giving good spot lighting in those hard to reach bits without you having to stick said torch in you mouth causing you to dribble allover the place, they also make you look *SO* geeky people are afraid to ask you questions.
For my mouse mat I have an A3 pad of black on white ruled paper (spine towards me) that gives very accurate response with my current cordless light mouse and the cordless ball mouse before it (also my mouse rollers never got dirty), you're never short of something to write on and when the page gets dirty just write the date on it, tear it off and file it as it will be covered in useful phone numbers and back of a fag packed calculations.
I also have a naked test rig in the detachable motherboard bay of an old case, the cards get all the lateral support they need and you don't have to have the MB on the edge of the table.
I'd like to have a sillyscope, a frequency generator and some other bits of cool but my desk is too small and my pockets are too shallow.
In order to save our freedom it was necessary to destroy it.