How to store unused things, spare parts and old HW

As a vintage computing fan and tech guy. There are things like cables, tools, screws, temporarily unused LAN components, etc. lying around me more often than I would want. In addition sure I also do have various vintage hardware in my small sort of collection. As time passed, the number of things to store gradually increased. I mean I don’t own that many things but two shoeboxes aren’t enough anymore. But it is not just about the actual number of items. It’s also about storage convenience. Shoebox is cheap however soft and in addition, you hardly obtain the same boxes each and every time you need some. It leads to a closet full of different and crumpled boxes. So the overall storage capabilities are not very good. That brought me to the point I started looking for a better solution.

As usually the best starting point when finding any solution – requirement list has to be determined. Then you compare available options with it. Finding out what meets the requirements best is a pretty straightforward matter with it. My requirements are mentioned in the below list.

1. It has to be solid and durable
2. It must have a lid
3. It has to be perfectly stackable
4. It has to be easily available
5. It has to be flat and square inside

I've found a couple of solutions but following meets above requirements flawlessly. So-called Euro containers with hingle lid by AUER Packaging are a great solution indeed. 

These containers are solid, stackable, have a lid, rectangular walls, and flat bottom. There are plenty of sizes available that will probably suit everybody needs. Finally, they are easily available within Europe on their eshop and by local resellers. I picked a couple of 40x30x13.5cm closed containers (there are open and closed variants) for the time being. Last but not least, labels can be placed on the container. So you can easily organize your unused items and you will always exactly know where the everything is. 

A stack of labeled containers.

Containers have a lid with durable hinges.

The lid can be wide open so it doesn't block the opening space at all.

The lid has two manual locks so the unintentional opening is prevented.

How to succeed with one PC

This post won’t be rocket science but rather a clever hint. First, a little prologue. These days I have got rid all of my spare PCs. One spare laptop was given to my girlfriend, the other spare was given to neighbor’s kids. This means that I have got only one PC at my place. I mean contemporary PC since I’ve got a small collection of vintage PCs. But those won’t be considered as useful PC for these days tasks.

Okay, I have one PC, and I struggled with my home network (VLANs, new L3 switch, etc.) in recent days. For those who don’t know what that situation means. It’s simple you need working internet access because you search the internet a lot and you need a host to test your configuration on. Having only one PC leads to a pretty frustrating situation. You have one NIC that is connected to your home ethernet network. The internet works, your network device’s administration environments are accessible. You create a new configuration that is naturally sandboxed on the different ethernet port. So you have to swap those cables. Good, you swap the cable and then find out that nothing works as supposed to, but you have also lost the internet and the administration access to your network devices. So you can’t check what happens. Great, isn’t it? :-)

Fortunately, one of the most convenient solutions is quite simple. We utilize our beloved VirtualBox and a USB Ethernet NIC. The obvious question is – why don’t we just plug USB NIC and use it under host OS? The answer is even more straightforward – because we don’t want to mix two network configuration under one OS. It may work well but not necessarily. Maybe someone has a simpler solution under one OS (let me know in the comments down below), but I prefer sandboxed setup.

In a nutshell, we create a new virtual machine without NIC, install OS (or run a live OS) and then attach USB NIC directly to the virtual machine. To achieve this, please follow below described steps.

1) Create a new virtual machine, choose boot disk, set CPU, memory, etc. and among these things disable all network adapters under Network tab.

2) However, USB has to be enabled.

3) Start up your machine and under Devices/USB choose your USB ethernet adapter. The device will be detached from your host OS and will be attached to the guest. Guest OS will install drivers, and after that, the network over external adapter is ready to go. Below screenshot shows live Ubuntu 18.04 pinging the gateway.

Finally, I have found this solution more practical than having two physical PCs. You do not need to jump between two keyboards, displays and mice after all.