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Halted moved a few blocks away, but is still in business.

That said, the owners of HSC (Halted) "have made the difficult decision to offer the company for sale.", so if you want to experience HSC, you should probably make your pilgrimage pretty damn soon.

It's a family-owned and -operated business, with a single retail presence in San Rafael, CA. I used to have a part-time job there when I was in high school. That was (*gah!*) 30 years ago. They're still in business.

There was a Radio Shack in town, too, but you only went there for the pre-fab project kits and the free battery. (And the TRS-80 computers, if you were in to those.)

Electronics Plus's prices are nothing to write home about. But their selection is Z0MG!!1! Where did they find all this stuff?!? The only places you'll find an equally astonishing variety of things is HSC and Weird Stuff Warehouse (and maybe Fry's).

Hello,

The company Woz mentioned, Halted Specialties Company, is still around. Great source of electronics surplus and I have any fond memories of visits there over the past decades and wandering around their dusty shelves. I had no idea they were so instrumental in the founding of Apple Computer.

Regards

Aryeh Goretsky

Digikey has 17,000 in stock axial resistors. HSC Electronic Supply probably has some as well, but their website isn't responding. (One of the few things I miss from the Bay Area is HSC.)

I ended up ordering about $100 worth of stuff including the basic Arduino, breadboards, and random things to plug in to them,. but once I got started, I've found that Radio Shack actually still carries electronic components! (:-) It's only about 5 feet of their shelf space, but the standard store has a bunch of drawers of LEDs, resistors, capacitors, alligator clips, a few simple ICs like 555s and op-amps, etc., and they've got another few feet of wall space with breadboards and soldering irons and such.

Of course, since this is Silicon Valley, I've also gotten components at Fry's, and there's HSC Electronic Supply for a huge assortment of components and tools, but Radio Shack's been a surprisingly convenient place to stop by and pick up the occasional bag-o'-resistors or replace the LED that you smoked.

Hal-Ted (now HSC) has been around for a lot longer.

http://www.halted.com/

I seem to remember another electronic junque shop called Hal-Tec (or Tech?). Maybe my misty memories are too foggy.

lawn, off, etc.

Between the racks I got from Weird Stuff, the tube radio I got at Electronics Flea Market, the wiring and connectors, and components I get from Halted and Al Lasher's Electronics, (I still miss Quinn's Electronics, though...), I almost don't need to go to Fry's or order from Digi-Key.

Not that I don't go to Fry's, Digi-Key, or even eBay, but it's nice to still be able to get parts 'n' stuff on a Saturday for $5 in gas and a pleasant drive, rather than a $5 shipping charge and a three-day wait. (I don't mind paying $5 for a $1 connector, but if I gotta go that route, I'll be damned if I'm gonna wait for it :)

Alas, the surplus store memorial list gets longer with every passing year.

But that covers a few places I know of in the Bay Area. Where are your surplus stores?

You may find old Amstrad drives or sources for the drives at Halted Specialities in Santa Clara.

http://www.halted.com/

I wish he were managing a store here in the Silicon Valley;

Real geeks use Fry's.
Uber-geeks use HPC.

Resistive touch panels (not including the screen) are incredibly simple and cheap... They can register position, but if you don't care, you can still use them to see if they've been pressed. Get some palm-pilot touch panels, peel off the overlay on the back for the graffiti section, and you have a nice ~4 inch touch sensor. Buy custom sizes from a place like 3m or digikey, or get old palm pilot touch panels (no screen, just the touch part) for $4 each from http://www.halted.com/ Look up how they work... they basically act as a voltage divider when pressed... a simple comparator circuit is all that you need to register a press, and it's much more elegant than resting the screen on a push switch... -Taylor

Can't forget HSC

Excess Solutions Lots of parts. Off 101 at Brokaw.

WeirdStuff Warehouse Lots of Sparcs.

Halted / HSC Good components, lasers, motors, some new parts.

Alltronics Used to be retail on Zanker, with jackelope, but it looks like they're just mail order now.

Closed:

Haltek off Shoreline in Mountain View.

J&M Surplus in San Carlos.

RA Enterprises, the best source of motors

Alltronics (retail)

And here are a few non-SV places with websites:

MECI, Inc.

All Electronics

Herbach and Rademan

C&H Sales

--
chahast AT pangaea FOO dhs FOO org
s/FOO/DOT/g

Not far away at Lawrence and Central (also near the Sunnyvale Fry's) is HSC Electronic Supply. Some old stuff, some new stuff, and if it's electronic they probably have it. You can occasionally get a very, very good deal there, and the staff is extremely knowledgable. It's one of those places where it's very easy for me to lose track of the time.

There are a couple of other places in the area, but Weird Stuff and HSC are the best.

I think HSC Electronic Supply is fairly well known around here, they mostly sell electronic components, but they have a lot of other stuff too.

I always check there first when I need a new computer power supply or keyboard, or if I want a card that doesn't need to be the newest. I dunno if it'd be worth it if I had to go through mail-order tho.

I have such a webpad: A Fujitsu Stylistic 1000: 486 CPU (fine for simple X / browsing), attachable PS/2 keyboard(I use the Twiddler II), VGA port (for CyVisor or Monitor) for when the 640x480 8" display isn't enough, radio pen, PCMCIA HD (270MB comes standard, 2GB available), 2 additional type II PCMCIA slots, IRDA, Serial, Parallel, and a 3750mAh battery lasts four or five hours on a charge. I'm running RedHat 7.0, but the cleanest install I've heard of is Debian. One can often purchase them surplus for around $100. HSC Electronics is currently out of stock, but you may find them elsewhere.

• Simple useful things: my girlfriend got me twenty pairs of identical black socks one year. No more sock sorting; They all matched!
• A cheap sturdy pocketknife. Gift from my mom one year. I use it everyday.
• A 15x handlens.
• Those $10 boxes of cheap sockets. Several of them, for each vehicle, in the workshop, the office, some to give to others...
• A large fresnel lens. One big enough to melt rocks. From Halted Electronics
• Subscription to Scientific American
• Fruit flies. Lots of fruit flies. Get them from: Ed's Fly Meat.
• Carnivorous Plants from California Carnivores (See previous gift.)

Another option is radio - WebGear Aviator is a ~2Mbps short-distance radio system that plugs into a parallel port, and they have other models for USB and PCMCIA. I don't know if there are Linux drivers yet or not. Their older models tend to be on sale at Fry's for about $100-150/pair. This means you can have the real PC in your computer room, but sit somewhere comfortable around the house with your laptop.

There are also phone-line and power-line systems for short-distance communications. Most of them are ~19200 instead of megabit speeds, but that's fine for terminal emulation and many programming activities.

Last time I saw a dumb terminal at a computer fair or the physical stores for Halted Specialties or Weird Stuff, it was about $10-20 for a wyse or equivalent.

Old Macintoshes are about $25. They're not as portable as a laptop, but they're a bit smaller than most dumb terminals, and they're cute.

There are all sorts of small portable computers, laptop-like things, industrial portables, penpads, etc. which can be cheap because they're obsolete but are still good enough to use as a remote terminal while sitting on your back porch; some of the industrial models can even be used in your hot tub :-)

Unfortunately, most older portables used specialized batteries, typically NiCad, and the batteries are often dead or near-dead and new replacements can't be found, so you either have to do battery hacking or run them off A/C, and eithe r way you tend to void the watertightness that lets you use them in the tub, as well as being less convenient.