221–230 of 464 posts
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A secret I've found is use hair ties instead of rubber bands with cables, they survive long stints in the garage much better
Garden stores/sections sell circles of green Velcro you can cut; I figure of it's good enough for UV then it'll work in a box. As a bonus, you don't need to raid her hairbands.
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Proper flaking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbxMyytWw60 Ziptie once coiled, attach label for what format / length. Bag cables with the same connectors. If you have more than fit in a gallon ziploc you should probably reduce them. Bonus if you hang them on a pegboard so you can see them with big clear labels on each bag. Edit: and shrinkwrapped labels on each end (e.g. 12345-USBC-2m) for double bonus points so tha…
> Ziptie once coiled, attach label for what format / length. Please god, no more zip ties. Use double sided Velcro strap. You can buy it in a roll and cut to length. Reuse it all you want. Join multiple shorter lengths to make a longer one. Just please don't make me cut another god damn zip tie off a bundled cord. I deal with enough zip tie bondage fetishists at work.
Recently, I was screwed by my big box of cables, when I pulled out a SATA power connector for my modular power supply, and learned very quickly that though the ports universally fit across modular PSUs, the pinouts are not actually intercompatible, and you can and will fry your hard drives. I didn't know this; I had foolishly assumed that SATA power connectors were standardized on both ends.
A PSU cable tester is valuable for this. They're much cheaper than a replacement PSU, and you can plug in cables wherever they fit on a PSU, and test whether the output is correct for the CPU/PCI/motherboard/SATA connector you want to plug it into. The PSU and cable might be a black box, but the output is always testable.
You want to do task X and discover you need cable Y. You go to find cable Y missing, then discover a new one is $55 and 2 days delivery. Never again.
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Remember CD spindles? Those are were a quarter of my cables live now. They can be stacked! There's also a few boxes and one tech bag. Also, the 15m (50ft) HDMI cable doesn't fit anywhere so it got it's own space.
A secret I've found is use hair ties instead of rubber bands with cables, they survive long stints in the garage much better
Key for me is to "group" cables. For example, I have a bag of USB-C cables, a bag of USB-A cables, etc. Grouping them is key to deduplicating. It's easy to look at a single legacy USB A-to-B "printer" cable in isolation and think "I might need this someday!" Because you really might need it someday. However, if you group them you might see that you have ten of them. And then you can get rid of... maybe 8 of them. I a…
Proper flaking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbxMyytWw60 Ziptie once coiled, attach label for what format / length. Bag cables with the same connectors. If you have more than fit in a gallon ziploc you should probably reduce them. Bonus if you hang them on a pegboard so you can see them with big clear labels on each bag. Edit: and shrinkwrapped labels on each end (e.g. 12345-USBC-2m) for double bonus points so tha…
Back many years when I was touring with bands, at the end of the night you'd see all the lighting crew walking around the stage coiling the long cables, with one end trailing after them, to make sure the twists were correct. That was much more useful than generic over-under for all cables.
over-under has its place, but I don't use it everywhere.
I put my cables in bags then in a box. I can't tell you how helpful the bags are. It only took me like an hour to sort the first time. But it's already saved me hours only a year later. Those 5 minutes of searching add up. Just fight the laziness and don't let entropy increase. It's * far* easier to stay organized than it is to organize
I recently purged my cable box. I had 8 HDMI cables... 8. What do I need 8 HDMI cables for? I tossed them in the garbage with a ton of other use less cables. I kept one HDMI cable (not 8) and a few odds and ends. I kept one rj45 Ethernet cable and tossed the rest. I even tossed my rj45 crimping tool kit. Why? Because I don't see the need to crimp Ethernet cables anytime soon and should the need arise I can buy a kit…
> What do I need 8 HDMI cables for 5 for five generations of consoles into the same TV 1 for the audio bar 1 for the hdmi switch to the tv 1 for a laptop when nothing else works
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Remember CD spindles? Those are were a quarter of my cables live now. They can be stacked! There's also a few boxes and one tech bag. Also, the 15m (50ft) HDMI cable doesn't fit anywhere so it got it's own space.
A secret I've found is use hair ties instead of rubber bands with cables, they survive long stints in the garage much better