How Software Developers Get Creative and Improvise

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Two days ago, I was going through a desk drawer filled with computer cables, adapters and drives and stumbled upon a tool that proved to be beyond invaluable to me back in 2009 or so. It is a mini USB [spinning or magnetic] hard disk drive (HDD) sealed in a 2 by 2 inch enclosure. During my lunch hour [at a nearby coffee shop] and at home, using my 9 inch ASUS Eee PC, I would rely on this mini HDD to develop my RapidDisk driver.

PocketDrive
PocketDrive

I have good memories using this drive. Shortly thereafter, Virtualbox would replace this drive but until that point, this was it. Access to data center hardware wasn’t as affordable or easy to come by at the time. So, I had to improvise as best as I could.

Do you have memories of a particular computing device or tool that makes you feel nostalgic every time you stumble upon it? If so, what is it and why?

 

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Published by Petros

Petros Koutoupis is the self appointed BDFL of the RapidDisk project. Most of his career has been in software development in the data storage industry. He is deeply involved in open source software development and for years has written code for the Linux kernel, various open source device drivers and applications in both the embedded and server spaces.