Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin
Ask HN: What should I put in my “computer person” handbag?
4 points by phtrivier on May 29, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 10 comments
I know we all fancy ourselves as expert in AI, autonomous systems, software architects, etc... but let's face the hard truth: for our non-geeky friends, families and foes, we are best-known as "computer guys/gals/persons".

Which means, there is an expectation that we suppose to make "computer things" work.

In particular, the following real-life scenarios are things where (at least for me), it would be realistic for a layperson to assume an experience engineer should be able to help:

* "Hey, aunt X has a couple (thousands) pictures on her phone, can you put them on my computer ?"

* "Oh, and by the way, can we look at them on the big TV ? That would make - insert name of a 10y old kid you're emotionnaly attached to - so happy" ?

* "Damn, there is a sheet of paper stuck in the printer, we need to print the card for the birthday of - insert name of a 100y old person you're emotionnaly attached to - can you help ?"

* "Oops, my laptop screen is black, but I need the excel spreadsheet that's in the SSD, how do I get it ?"

* "I don't understand, every time I switch the TV-on, the Internet gets slow in my bedroom"

* "My computer is so slooww since I lent it to - insert name of a 14y old teenager who's going to do what 14y old teenagers do with a computer".

* etc, etc, etc... I'm pretty sure most HN readers had some kind of related experience.

One option to deal with that is the passive-aggressive "No I won't fix you computer" t-shirt [1], but, let's assume you want to be able to be more helpfull.

Let's picture ourselves as old-time doctors. Back in the days, if one of your relatives was an MD, you can be pretty sure they always went around with a handbag full of a few instruments, a couple medecines, etc... that let them be "helpful" in a maybe 80% of the everyday "bobos" (in the "small sores" meaning").

Sure, they would not be able to perform open-skull heart surgeries, but stitching / banding / cleaning / soothing could be expecting.

My claim is:

* "showing pictures from a computer on a TV screen" is not open-skull brain surgeries

* however, because every single device is subtly incompatible with every single other device, it's far from trivial if you don't have right cables / plugs / converters / etc...

* therefore, a "computer person" should have a couple tools / items (even software, maybe ?) at hand to be able to help in 80% of the sensible cases.

So, what goes into this bag ? I would start with those items, but any idea / suggestion / "swiss army knifes" is welcome

# hardware

* hdmi<->hdmi cable (seems like it's the one reliable thing on tv) * hdmi<->usb-A adapter * hdmi<->usb-C adapter (in the average gathering, neither "no-one" nor "everyone" has an Apple device) * a hefty usb stick (still vastly the simplest way to transfer files) * usb-C <-> usb-a cable that works for both power and data * a usb-C <-> AC/DC adapter (you'll have) * some dust-cleaner spray ?

(I could add "screwdrivers", etc... but have you actually every used them to "fix someone computer/phone issue" ? I mean, once you've open the laptop, what do you do to make windows 8 aggree to connect to the wifi ?)

# network

* an ethernet cable and usb adapter (is it still the most reliable internet link stuff, or is there something better ?) * something to check if the wifi signal is strong enough ? * your own 4G dongle ?

# software

* I've barely been using windows in the last two decades, but every real human being is using some version of it. I guess it's pretty thin in the "tools to fix things department". If I were to put some usefull stuff on a stick to diagnose / help / recover / whatever, what would it be ?

* are there any linux usb-distro specifically targeted towards "fixing your uncle's computer"

Etc, etc...

[1] https://www.redbubble.com/i/t-shirt/Funny-Programming-No-I-Won-T-Fix-Your-Computer-by-noirty/34501314.FB110



3.5 mm to 3.5 mm cable with decent length would be nice to have if you need to hook up a laptop/phone to speakers. A spare PC power cord and a figure 8 cable would also be nice. I've seen many cheap cables that caused sparks because of a bad plug. One millimeter off and computer shuts off.

One Philips PH02 screwdriver if you ever need to clean a PC or change SSD, memory, etc.

For the software: for Windows side you can use Hiren's BootCD (you can use USB drive despite it's name). It doesn't contain pirated software as Sergei Strelec WinPE.

As for Linux - well, you can use Ubuntu's Live USB/DVD to be able to get a running system in minutes to recover files or do other stuff.


A usb mouse (an el-cheapo, "travel" one with a reel for the cable is good enough)[1]. If you have space enough I would also consider a (small) USB keyboard.

Anecdata:

only three days ago I was working on a (relatively) important document on a (crappy) Windows 10 laptop. I had not saved the work and went to lunch (I know I should have saved it) leaving the document open in the word processor. When back, for whatever reasons, the computer trackpad and keyboard did not respond. Luckily I had a spare mouse handy and managed to save the document before rebooting and "fixing" the issue. Actually I don't think I fixed anything, upon reboot the keyboard worked just fine, but not the trackpad and had to re-install the trackpad driver. I had this same thing happen a couple other times on older Windows laptops.

[1] I have one of these cheap kits, that include a small USB hub and various connectors beside the mouse:

https://www.tradeshopitalia.com/accessori-usb/177-kit-usb-17...

This is an old one, nowadays you would need also some USB-C converters/adapters.


USB drives, dual type with OTG connector to plug into tablets or phones when needed. Also blanks ready to repartition & format. Others packed with software and tools.

If you're going to make the most use of USB drives might as well have some bootable USB drives, Windows-To-Go, Linux live distros.

DVI to HDMI cable.

DVI to VGA adapter.

Displayport cables, full-size and mini.

USB printer cable.

Ethernet crossover cable. Most networking gear is self-detecting the cable now, but when you do need a crossover nothing else will do. If you're only going to carry one ethernet cable this is the one.

USB Wifi and Bluetooth dongles.

5G hotspot.

Spare SSD. Quick-change external SSD enclosure with USB connection. Spare SATA cable.

Spare motherboard batteries.

3.5mm audio cable, mini speaker dual 3.5/Bluetooth. Bluetooth earbuds. 3.5mm earbuds. 3.5mm mini mic. Spare webcam.

Spudging tools.

Proper mini-screwdrivers for changing laptop drives.

Heatsink paste. Canned air.

Extension USB cable, really good so the Wifi dongle can be aimed as an antenna.

USB hub. Spare mini-mouse. Mouse pad.

Expendable laptop for when you do need to go online and everything else is down or highly suspect. Especially with cdrom and bootable cd's. Blank writable cdroms, dvdroms.

Last but not least, USB floppy drive, bootable DOS floppy, blank floppy, might as well have a game or two. People still love Tetris.


Did you had luck with newer motherboards and DOS? I've seen IDE compatibility mode for SATA removed and DOS can't access disks even for diagnostics, like Victoria HDD.

And what use cases do you have in DOS that can't be done in Windows/Linux Live CD?


Never had a problem yet except for UEFI boards which have no legacy CSM. Except some of the truly well-engineered UEFI firmwares do boot from a FAT32 external MBR volume. Otherwise no DOS for you.

Just use CSM and leave it in SATA mode and the A: drive, plus FAT volumes on HDD/SSD's are accessible and enumerated conventionally as C:, D:, E:, etc. according to legacy hierarchy on each boot. Remember to have all but one of your primary partitions hidden per HDD while in DOS. Carefully go wild with logical volumes often beyond 120GB offsets.

For best reliability I like to format FAT volumes using the MSDOS from Windows 98SE, only up to 32GB, especially to format USB sticks. Above 32GB I use NTFS and format using Windows 11. Alternatively the long-lost Iomega fat32 formatter would go way beyond 32GB using alternative cluster size far more reliably than Windows ME which was made for 64GB max. Always use the Scandisk fom W98SE, not WinME DOS for anything. Sometimes partiton in DOS FDISK too but more often using good old Linux Mint 9. Mint 10 is just as good for partitioning, but mkfs vfat declined in useful granularity at that point. Remember the live distro of Mint 9 doesn't support USB3, so use a USB2 socket for that. Etcher just doesn't cut it by comparison, use Rufus if you can't do it manually on your own. Most often zero whole drives before partitioning, and zero whole partitions before formatting. Much better off without pre-existing stray boot sectors, FATs or MFT's scattered around in the middle of your volume to take your data by surprise. Also many USB sticks formatted from the factory have a defective location for the backup volume boot sector if there even is a backup. Microsoft dropped the backup boot sector themself when formatting FAT32 with the release of XP, seems likely intended to compromise FAT32 reliability and make slower NTFS seem more acceptable when pushed into the mainstream back then.

Things like Windows XP or older won't install or run in SATA mode without a proper driver floppy for F6'ing, that's when it's easier just to use IDE mode sometimes. Also can be more challenging to add SATA drivers after installing though, and you usually end up pointing to the same files the floppy has on it.

Also the undocumented DOS command FDISK /MBR writes the high-reliability DOS MBR to sector 0 of your "master" HDD, of course without touching the partition table. This can only be accomplished from floppy.

Then DMDE disk editor has a DOS version made to run from floppy. Careful usage up to 120GB often but usually just access sector 0.

Things like Battle Chess or Tetris need no introduction, people can be highly amused booting & running it from a floppy whether or not a PC has any other drives or not. I'm partial to the DOS versions of the old 3M Bookshelf board game Acquire, all about investments, shareholders and mergers. Everyone prospers (at the end the bank might even run out of the originally provided paper currency, and you certainly will endure zero cash yourself before recovering during play) so it's more fun than the appropriately named Monopoly, plus it always goes to a direct ending usually in an hour or less. Most money-making person still wins.


>Things like Windows XP or older won't install or run in SATA mode without a proper driver floppy for F6'ing, that's when it's easier just to use IDE mode sometimes. Also can be more challenging to add SATA drivers after installing though, and you usually end up pointing to the same files the floppy has on it.

JFYI, as long as you have the actual driver files, and the motherboard can boot from a USB stick, you can use a "virtual" floppy via Syslinux or grub4dos for loading the F6 driver during setup:

http://wp.xin.at/archives/2702

https://msfn.org/board/topic/154071-f6-without-a-floppy-driv...


Thanks for this jaclaz, always good to see your messages.

Might even work from a non-bootable USB stick formatted by MSDOS or Windows as a floppy (no MBR or partition table, same sector 0 as a floppy) if the BIOS recognizes it as A: (maybe also as B:) when plugged in before powerup.

Assuming the PC is booted to the XP CDROM or one of the other effective ways to conventionally install XP.

For XP I do like having both IDE and SATA drivers installed in the long run so it will still boot regardless of BIOS HDD mode setting.

Ideally when the BIOS would be set to boot from floppy with first priority, if a floppy was in the drive but had no boot files, the next boot device would then be tried.


It greatly depends.

With USB sticks - generally speaking and particularly with older hardware - bootability is "pure madness", the BIOS may want a partitioned or unpartitioned device, may have limit on the size of the device (i.e. 2 GB boots, 4 GB or bigger doesn't), may "like" (or not like) a given MBR or bootsector code, it is a mess.

In the good ol' times there was the makebootfat "special" setup, with the same stick that was at the same time partitioned and unpartitioned, then there was the "triple boot MBR" by Tinybit (one of the Authors of grub4dos) and FBinst (by Bean, another contributor to grub4dos) to workaround some of these BIOSes limitations/strange behaviours.

Often a non-bootable USB stick connected to the system is not mapped at all by the BIOS, but - again it depends - the grub4dos internal USB stack or chainloading a PloP might reveal it.


Wow, that's a quite detailed response, thank you.

I need to check out DMDE disk editor, because the last disk editor in DOS that I used was an old copy of PartitionMagic with Win9x-like interface.

Also, I remembered that old boards without UEFI rarely came with a flash utility inside BIOS, so you need to boot to DOS and use AMIFLASH or some other utility to update it.


Newest DMDE version is on the main download page of his site:

https://dmde.com/download.html

Latest DOS version of DMDE is here:

https://dmde.com/moredownload.html

I might have encountered a defect in version 4, sticking with 3.6 for now, get it while you can.

I used to use partition magic too.

For UEFI it's good to become familiar with "the" EFI Shell, many versions exist, not always the best one is built into the mainboard firmware, if any. All named shellx64.efi

http://superuser.com/questions/592854/ddg#592884

>The EFI Shell is a "shell" (think of a command prompt or a terminal shell) that a (U)EFI BIOS can boot directly into (instead of your OS), allowing control and scripting of many items including booting scenarios.

>Installing[0] an EFI shell in an "EFI System" partition (type EF00) formatted with a VFAT file system and properly named shellx64.efi for a 64-bit system will allow you to boot directly into it from your BIOS.

[0] copying shellx64.efi to the root of a FAT32 EFI volume




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: