Tech Tip

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Anyone who has done in situ simulation knows, eventually you will forget a cable or the site you are working at will not have all the cables you need. Over the years, I have come to carry around a little “ditty” bag with excess cables and adapters you can take with you. Here is a short list:

Items to have on hand

• HDMI cable
• Lightning cable
• VGA cable
• Mini-USB cable (not seen much anymore, but still worth keeping around)
• Micro-USB cable
• Thunderbolt or mini-DisplayPort cable
  (not seen much anymore, but still worth keeping around)
• USB 3 Micro-B cable
• DisplayPort Cable
• USB A to B cable
• USB-C cable
• 3.5mm auxilliary cable
• SATA cable (even better would be a SATA to USB cable)
• 3-prong computer power cord
• 2-prong power cord
• Ethernet cable

Adapters to have on hand

• USB-C to USB-A
• USB-C to DisplayPort
• USB-C to VGA
• USB-C to HDMI
• USB-C to DVI
• HDMI to VGA
• VGA to HDMI
• DisplayPort to VGA
• DisplayPort to HDMI
• DVI to VGA
• VGA female to VGA female
• HDMI connector (used to connect 2 HDMI cables together)

Other Miscellaneous Items

• USB-C hub/multi port adapter
• USB-A hub
• USB thumb drive or external hard drive
• Travel external battery
• SD card reader

Cords you can probably toss out unless you see it in your organization

• Apple 30-pin cables
• DVI cables (DVI-I and DVI-D)
• RCA composite cables
• S-video cables
• Coaxial cable
• PS/2 cables

I’ve seen some simulation technicians carry a little tool kit along with them too. Stay tuned and we’ll talk about that in a later post.