hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr0225.txt

Episode: 225
Title: HPR0225: What's in my Toolkit part 2
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0225/hpr0225.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 14:19:09

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Music
Hello, this is Cybercard and this is what's in my toolkit.
My toolkit consists of a small bag, approximately a foot tall, nine inches wide, six inches deep.
It used to be a satchel, like a really big satchel, but the side busted out of it and it was
one of those ones that was collapsible to where you could collapse into a smaller bag.
I cut away the busted out part and modified it to where it was just permanently a small bag
and it served me pretty well since I did that.
In my bag is all the necessary tools I'm going to I usually need for doing computer repair.
And while there might be a couple things missing floating around the house I pretty much
keep all of my necessary stuff in there. In there right now and I'll note anything that's missing
this should be in there. Starting off is a handy-dandy motherboard tester. Got that on eBay for
about 14 bucks. Couldn't be that to deal. Got a box of ethernet cable ends and a creeper.
I've got a very small wireless B. You know what's G? Well this is a very small
links this router for port and wireless G for a networking laptop with customer's machine if
you don't have a router on the inside. I have my wife's phone cable that I've been looking for.
Wonderful. She's going to be so happy.
I have the adapter for the links this router.
And it leatherment.
I've only used one of these a few times and found it handy but I don't know why. Just keep
one around. The leatherment is if you're not familiar with it. It's kind of I think of it as a
swiss army knife with pliers. It opens up kind of like a butterfly knife and instead of a blade
to gut somebody with you get a pair of needle nose pliers or something like that. It's got
an assortment of other tools in it but usually I just use it for the pliers.
Because they usually have the other stuff available. Though the blades are sometimes handy.
I have a broken down old tooth brush. The head's bent back and bent so to get hard to reach places
This is for cleaning out motherboards. Essentially the dusting and you know that can of air just won't
get the grime off. Somebody's been at a machine for a long time and they have it cleaned it.
A can of compressed air isn't always going to do the job. Sometimes you're going to need a brush.
Have that brush toothbrush and I also have another stiff bristle to brush that came out of a
clare-all hair dyeing kit. I don't know where it came from. Function over form kind of guy.
The bristles on this are approximately it ain't long and they're pretty stiff. They're separated
perfect for getting down inside of heat sinks and it's all plastic of course.
That's another thing that's very important to have. That's one of my most used tools.
I've got some small roll of black electric tape.
That seems to be one pocket explored.
All right, let me put some of the stuff back.
Okay, on to the next pocket. Next pocket.
It tends to fill up screwdriver.
Another Phillips screwdriver.
Flathead screwdriver.
A bendable magnetic light.
Something I got for Christmas from I don't remember.
It's about the length of a pen and it's got an LED light on the end of it.
On the end of a bendable, posable neck and the base of it is magnetic.
So you can't be going to be careful with where you stick that but it's great for
like this sticking on the side of a case and pointing it where you need the light and letting
it do its little job. The battery is it don't last too long because it keeps getting turned on
accidentally in my bag. It's got to be able to laser pointer which it's probably where all the
battery is going to but I don't use that much. Except the plate kit.
A very small Phillips screwdriver and a buttered knife because you just never know some people call
that a case knife. Very handy at times when a screwdriver just won't do the trick.
There's a pen and a Sharpie and a pair of plastic tweezers. Now these are very handy and I kind
of ripped these out of our first aid kit and kind of first aid kit from the Walmart and inside of
those pair of tweezers and they're big and they're black and they're plastic and they don't
climp duct electricity. So when you drop a screw, some place it shouldn't be and you need to get it out
of there but say you don't forget your you don't remember to unplug the device. It's good to have
a pair of plastic tweezers. I've got a hard drive adapter. This changes a laptop hard drive
into a desktop hard drive. This allows me to work on laptop hard drives on my desktop or
any desktop and basically changes a laptop drive into an IDE.
Driving lets me work on it without having to stick it in my own laptop which is something I'm not
usually wanting to do. I've got another small flashlight. This is just a very tiny flashlight and
also got a like a carabiner style flashlight on the side of the bag. I've got a package of zip ties
sorted sizes. I've got your classic lured forehead flashlight with the strap that goes around your
noggin and I don't know what that goes to. Apparently a piece of plastic molding off something that I
said to keep. I've got an SD actually a multi-fifteen one card reader for compact flash and SD cards
and whatnot. 20 bucks a Walmart. And we're unnamed plastic stuff. Somebody's missing some parts I
guess. Another toothbrush. This one should actually be in the bathroom because I use that one.
Here is a second small case fan or a processor fan. Now it's not a processor fan. It's got
more like connectors to it so it's like a small case fan. Just in there for use whenever
happen to find a need for it. I've got a keyboard adapter that goes from the very big fat
you know biggest your finger keyboard connectors to the very small PS2 connectors. Now I'm not sure
the old ones were called. Somebody probably smacked me over that one but well what can you do.
They were going out of style about the time I got into computers so I do have an adapter for them so
they're not useless to me. Now I have a heat sink and fan. Now this looks like it's for a
like a K6 processor. Something like that. Very small.
So the name was piece of metal there. Another heat sink.
Some of this is just junk that's accumulated from repair jobs and some of it stuff that I take
specifically for repair jobs. I've got another actually two more of the old keyboard.
The keyboard adapters has a USB keyboard adapter. It adapts USB to a PS2 port.
I guess it could be mouse but
a dry re-sparker. Just phone and board. I need to see something strange. Just kidding.
And that seems to be all that pocket.
There's a few loose. A few loose cable ties at the bottom but I'm going to pause for a second
to stick all this back in. Okay moving on next pocket. Two things I forgot to mention from the
last pocket is a very small injector with Arctic silver thermal compound for putting on processors
and a PS2 to USB connector. So taking it the other direction there.
Okay in the new pocket I keep my case of CDs for all the essential things.
Okay so everybody's wondering why I'm whispering it is about 5 a.m. I'm up and I'm bored.
All right in my repair bag CD case. I'm going to have copies of the Ubuntu LTS version 8.04.1,
2.02 customers. I've got a copy of the next mint 5. Ubuntu server already here.
I've got a copy of gutsy, feisty, dapper. I've got an alternate CD of dapper.
I've got some links this one. It was drivers for PCI cards, USB cards. I've got a copy of fire hydrant.
Fire hydrant is an offshoot of puppy linux and it's actually pretty nice as far as you know your
live discs go. It's got a lot of good stuff on there. I highly recommend checking that out if you
haven't before. It needs a machine with pretty good round though because it's pretty heavy for
for a live CD. I mean if you're a machine to run
and Ubuntu live CD, it'll run the fire hydrant CD but the idea of the fire hydrant is it's
it's meant for live sessions so the more RAM you've got the better. I've got a copy of a puppy
linux 2.17. That's probably a little outdated. So DVD of all these ISOs for backups.
A puppy 2.15. The community edition was really good. It's one of the first, I guess you
called trained puppies. Another copy of puppy 2.17. Inferno 3.01b is another offshoot of
puppy. It's one of the versions of the fire hydrant. It's an offshoot of fire hydrant. I don't know.
It's really cool. It's got all the stuff I normally use on a live disc.
Now I've got two copies of the ultimate boot CD. If you haven't, if you don't have a copy
let's go get one because it's handy as hell. It's all kinds of disc tools, formatting tools,
all kinds of goodies. It's called the ultimate boot CD. Just google it, you'll find it. It's a must-have
for anybody's toolkit. You can zero out drives. You can do formatting and all that good stuff
what that will happen to go up to a graphical UI. Speaking of partitioning, formatting and
the graphical UI I've got a D-Party disc. I've got a customized version of an XPU service
pack 2. Slipped streamed into it. Another copy of Ubuntu hard here. Driver's disc for my trio.
Copy of the open disc project with the special software Freedom Day edition.
Some games. My own private software Freedom Day disc with videos from YouTube among other things.
My chopdown tiny XP. Then I took the 700 meg install disc and brought it down to a 300 meg ISO.
I've taken out all of the junk, the bloat and fluff.
Last but not least, my Windows password cracker disc. For when I get sent a little grandma that
just can't remember what her password is. It's a lot easier than reinstalling. You just stick this
in there and it'll go through and use the rainbow tables and pop out the password to let you know
what it is. It's very handy I've never actually had cause to use it yet so I couldn't tell you
if it works or not but I imagine someday I'll get the chance because people are forgetful and
that's my CD case. I have a about a six foot long at the night cord.
A three foot long at the night cord.
Some other CDs that should probably be put up.
I've got to copy the booth CD. It's a Firefox Kiosk disc. It's great for putting in your machine.
It's kind of like the guest mode when the new Ubuntu just comes up to a browser. Nothing else.
Close the button. Try to close out of the browser. It just starts out of the browser.
Doesn't want you to do anything but surf the net. It's designed for like internet kiosks and such.
It's very handy. It works pretty good. It does not handle wireless drivers before you even ask.
There might be a new version that does so check that out but this is the Firefox Kiosk disc.
Otherwise known as the booth CD. I don't know you can get that from source forward by the way.
A copy of XP, service pack one. A copy of last year's open CD.
Even the Firefox discs. I've got the Ubuntu Dapper for the Mac.
The Firefox Kiosk copy of FIC. Another open CD.
Some nameless disc with a little scratches on it. Let's go ahead and trash.
And that's not really explainable.
I've got a very short EID cable.
And that's that pocket. Pause was to go with the stuff back in.
Okay, last little bit here. I've got some other pockets with business cards and some blank CD cases.
Or some empty CD cases I should say. And that's about all for that.
The bag is pretty nice. It's got a pocket where you used to keep all the folds of the big bag.
It used to be. It's kind of weird to turn the bag upside down and get into there but
it's got a good apartment in there for keeping hard drives and stuff like that. It's transporting.
Maybe PCI cards or something like that.
Partly inside there. It looks like three video cards.
A GPU all the way. These are old junk.
Pick and pull parts. Just a good to keep handy a video card.
Somebody's machine doesn't show up any video. You just pop that in there and
you got it fixed for next to nothing because it's a part that you pulled out of another machine.
That's somebody didn't want. Though I should note to self. I should have a PCI card in here.
Chris Knight everybody's got a GP. And yeah, I know you guys are all up on the PCI express and all that
stuff. I live behind the times because it's a lot cheaper to do so.
All you guys are spending three or four hundred dollars on your very nice graphics cards.
I'm spending 40 bucks on the card that used to be four hundred dollars. Buying it on eBay.
So, sacrifice a little bit of the bleeding edge and you do pretty well.
And that's my tool kit. There's a few things missing that I need to put in here.
Namely I've got a full track down my miniature screwdriver set. But usually keep some scissors.
And usually keep a lighter for heating up the electrical tape whenever I type stuff.
Makes it gives it a good solid seal. It's also great when you're working with
like a headphone wire. Like some of that stuff. It doesn't really have a normal insulation.
It's kind of painted on and you'll ruin the wire just trying to oh shut up.
You don't ruin the wire just trying to strip it down. So what you're doing that case is you just
extend out a good portion of it. You know a couple inches and then you burn it.
You'll burn the insulation off. The wire itself will turn red hot but it won't melt.
And then you can splice as you normally would. It works pretty well. You gotta be
have a delicate touch. It is fragile. But it's hell bodies. You can try to strip it with your teeth.
Just smelt it from me to you. And thanks for listening.
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