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If you want more servers like that, Wierd Stuff Warehouse in Sunnyvale, CA, has the same HP series G Xeon servers for $189. (2 3GHz quad-core Xeons per server! Hard drives are extra, but cheap.) Wierd Stuff has huge supplies of previous-generation data center equipment.

It's amazing how cheap computer hardware is now.

Weird Stuff [weirdstuff.com]

Whoa. The kids can catch up with Slashdot nerd culture.

Last time I went to Weird Stuff they had a huge stack of 1U, 8GB DRAM Dell servers for about $150 each.

I don't think a "Blue Book" system could ever work:

• Used IT equipment comes in bursts: imagine thousands of the same model of car in the same color/options all appearing at the dealership at once. Supply is grossly disconnected from demand. Pricing could never equilibriate.
• Computing power is still growing too fast: yesterday's servers consume too much resource per unit of work/infrastructure to justify using them. Witness the secondary price above—less than 1/20th of the original purchase price, but when networking, rack space, storage and power are included, the capital cost, even if zero, would still likely be too high.

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).

I buy used Dell's from Weird Stuff Warehouse in Sunnyvale.
http://www.weirdstuff.com/

I have a few projects that require a windows OS and can't run under wine. By buying a Dell from weird stuff, the OS is licensed to the machine. So it's little more than a convenience thing for me.

If you go to Weird Stuff Warehouse in Silicon Valley, you can get enough cheap previous-generation stuff to build a data center.

• 1U rackmount servers, $50. Working, just obsolete by a few years.
• Rack-mount networking gear. Working, just about 1/4 the density of current gear, and 100Mb/s, not gigabit Ethernet.
• Rockwell 12-channel GPS module, $8.95. Nothing wrong with it, it's just 71mm across, which is huge by mobile standards. Good time standard.

That's all working stuff, not junk. It's kind of depressing. Most of the gear there was valuable only a few years ago.

There's a service in Oakland CA which takes discarded desktop systems. They check them out, try some board swaps to get them to work, clean them up, build them up to a minimally usable standard, wipe the hard drives, install Ubuntu Linux, and send them out to schools that need computers. That's about as good as recycling seems to get.

A good digital scope costs hundreds if not thousands of dollars

Sometimes you can get lucky and grab one for free or nearly free. I got a Tektronix 2440 this way. It wasn't completely working, mind you, but it's something one can fix... if not then probably you don't need the scope anyway :-) There is a lot of old, well used and maybe a bit broken equipment around that nobody in a business wants. You just need to make contacts, look around, visit your neighborhood Weird Stuff - and dive into a dumpster sometimes.

But there is something else you can do. Build your own high speed oscilloscope. Today it's not that difficult. Take AD9601, for example - it's a 300 MSPS A/D with dual (interleaved) parallel bus. You need also an FPGA to capture the data - some Spartan probably will do. Then you need a simple USB MCU to fetch the data from the FPGA and slowly ship it into the PC. Total three ICs, not counting the analog front end which is not a rocket science anymore. You can generate the sample clock with a DCM in the FPGA. Build such a thing and it will be a great exercise. Such a scope will be not a toy, it will be a very useful, small device. Logic Shrimp is a logic analyzer, but this is a real scope - in all its 10-bit glory. You actually can measure analog signals with it. You can use even a lower resolution A/D, like AD9484. (Bits are necessary when you are doing DSP, not when you are just looking at things.)

A good digital scope costs hundreds if not thousands of dollars

Sometimes you can get lucky and grab one for free or nearly free. I got a Tektronix 2440 this way. It wasn't completely working, mind you, but it's something one can fix... if not then probably you don't need the scope anyway :-) There is a lot of old, well used and maybe a bit broken equipment around that nobody in a business wants. You just need to make contacts, look around, visit your neighborhood Weird Stuff.

But there is something else you can do. Build your own high speed oscilloscope. Today it's not that difficult. Take AD9601, for example - it's a 300 MSPS A/D with dual (interleaved) parallel bus. You need also an FPGA to capture the data - some Spartan probably will do. Then you need a simple USB MCU to fetch the data from the FPGA and slowly ship it into the PC. Total three ICs, not counting the analog front end which is not a rocket science. You can generate the sample clock with a DCM in the FPGA. Build such a thing and it will be a great exercise. Such a scope will be not a toy, it will be a very useful, small device. Logic Shrimp is a logic analyzer, but this is a real scope - in all its 10-bit glory. You actually can measure analog signals with it. You can use even a lower resolution A/D, like AD9484. (Bits are necessary when you are doing DSP, not when you are just looking at things.)

In Silicon Valley, you take stuff like that to Weird Stuff Warehouse, which handles both surplus and electronics recycling. They're more into commercial gear, though; if you want previous-generation 1U servers, they have plenty.

And they did it long before apple: http://www.weirdstuff.com/mas_assets/thumb/13034.jpg

It appears they already have an online store. (www.weirdstuff.com - from the article.) Why would they need to use Ebay?

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?

They'll go to Weird Stuff Warehouse, the surplus place near Yahoo HQ. Want a few hundred servers cheap? They have them stacked up.

Dismantling a failed company is routine in Silicon Valley. Big assets are auctioned off by DoveBid. Miscellaneous computers go to Weird Stuff. Furniture and partitions go to Consolidated Office Outfitters. In less than a month, the building will be empty and ready for rental.

A cheap single-channel SCSI card and a DDS3 or DDS4 SCSI tape drive should back up any drive you have in a Pentium 100 with plenty of room to spare. Alternatively, an IDE CD-RW drive is about $15.

You might not have a way to add an IDE port to the 486 if you are out of them or to add the SCSI card, but there are plenty of ISA, EISA, PCI, and even VESA-LB cards for either on the net that are working pulls or surplus factory-sealed stock.

Check out WeirdStuff, PC Surplus Online, or PacificGeek.com for what you need. Just please don't buy the last of the ISA SCSI cards before I get another one. ;-)

Yes, I have tried the quiet version, but I like the black 104 key from IBM FRU PN: 02K0861 - Model: KB-7953 better.

The ka-klang board offers better feedback than the rubber dome, and I feel the "crunch" of this 7953 is better than a klu-mush of the Unicomp quiet.

Really, I would got to a "computer show" (if those exist anymore?), a second hand computer store (like Weird Stuff) or some place that has piles of keyboards and fish out like 10 or so PS/2 keyboards of all different flavors and take them for a spin.

The one great thing about IBM branded keyboards is they last about as long as a selectric: Forever.

I got a small 1U 150w celeron system for less than $50, but you have to go in to find that kind of stuff.

They have nice current systems too.

http://www.weirdstuff.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?category=10174

highly recommended

I've get a lot of my stuff from Weird Stuff. I wouldn't be surprised to find something with a "goggle" property tag there... :)

Oh, but you were really talking about high-priced cameras. The high-end stuff usually does cost an order of magnitude more than the pretty good stuff when it first comes out, and if you're a professional photographer it may make sense to buy it. If you need whatever this year's version of really high resolution is, with really perfect optics, really good color definition, high speed, and able to plug in a wide range of professional-quality lenses and similar frobs, yeah, you could spend that kind of money. On the other hand, if you're going to post pictures on a web page, a $99 camera and Photoshop is probably overkill. My general preference is toward the $49 range, e.g. a camera that would be $29 with a couple of features fixed, like removable memory cards instead of built-in, and slightly better batteries and maybe a flash. But I mostly take pictures to remember travel and family get-togethers, and 1024x768 is more than I need.

In the last year, Samsung (and others) have had some decent quality laser printers for under $100 (even less with rebate). And barcodes can be printed with inkjets! Plus, to get a barcode scanner is as cheap as the current going rate for the ubiquitous cuecat (ubiquitous in that they made a shit-load of them and so are easy to find). Here is one for $5.95.

Want a printer and barcode scanner? You can probably get the pair for under $100.

Last time I was physically down there I think I saw a few.

http://www.weirdstuff.com/

Their website seems to be down at the moment but check back later...

There's an Amiga 2000 Video Toaster in the showroom at WeirdStuff (Sunnyvale, CA) for, I believe it was, $299. It looked like it was in good or better condition, though honestly I don't know much about it, so I can't really tell anymore about it.

I dunno. Removable storage devices are kind of inherently heterosexual, don't ya think?

The Iomega kind even have "sexually transmitted" contagious diseases if you put your "disk" (wink) in someone else's infected "slot" (nudge) and then return home to your partner. At least according to this authoritative and not at all clueless, loony or hysterical source.

My friends tell me that anthro-gyno-pomorphising computer equipment is silly, but I know they're wrong. (warning: link not work-safe!)

The used/surplus market can really be your friend once you get to the States. Some areas are better supplied than others. For example, the Seattle area has RE-PC, which bills itself as the largest used/recycled computer place in the northwest (probably true -- I've not found any other computer surplus place in the region quite so large). I see rackmount cases and parts turn up there all the time, at both the retail locations, and the prices are generally pretty cheap.

The SF Bay Area part of California has a generous supply of used electronics and computer places too numerous to list in any detail here. At the risk of load-testing my web server, I have a page at this link that lists all the Bay Area surplus places that I knew of as of my last (annual) trip to the area in 2003.

I would, however, like to point out one place in particular in the Bay Area. Weird Stuff Warehouse has to be seen to be believed, though their prices can be a little on the high side, IMO.

I also have store and swap meet listings for the Puget Sound region and the metro Portland area of Oregon.

Outside of the retail surplus scene, amateur ("ham") radio swap meets can also be excellent sources of such parts. I bought my original rack case from one of the Bay Area events back in 2000, and it is still serving me well today. You can search for hamfests close to whatever area you'll be moving to at this link.

I hope that helps. Rackmount stuff is great fun, and scrounging for it (and other parts) even more so. Definitely part of the "Tinkerer's Spirit."

Enjoy your travels.

... the article with links...

New Startup Secret: Dumpster Diving - Rafe Needleman

Last week I covered Roku, the high-end digital media player for HDTV buyers with money to burn. Roku was founded and financed by Anthony Wood, who made out well when he sold ReplayTV to SonicBlue. He's a rich guy selling gizmos to other rich guys, but not all startups have Anthony's resources. Here is a success story from one resource-challenged startup. Wallflower, which is also in the digital photograph display business, managed to get itself off the ground with a strategy I've seen only once before: dumpster diving.

The company makes (expensive) digital picture frames that compete with Ceiva, Digiframe, and Pacific Digital. Nothing special there. But Wallflower's startup plan was based around building its high-end products with pieces from recycled computers. To get started, Wallflower founders Mitch Kahn and Gordon Clyne bought 150 old but unused laptops from liquidators and via eBay, for $25 to $150 each. They were obsolete as workstations (most had 133MHz CPUs and smallish hard drives) but had the right pieces to make nice picture framesmost importantly, working 12" LCD panels.

Mitch and Gordon's small team disassembled the machines, mounted the displays in handmade wood frames with the motherboard and hard disk, and added Wi-Fi and their own Linux-based software. Basically, the Wallflower displays are Web servers that appear on a Windows desktop as disk drivesyou put one on your network and you can just drag pictures onto it, and call up its internal home page to manage its settings. Now you have a nice big electronic photo frame to show your digital pictures, and changing the display is as easy as typing a URL into your home computer.

Frankly I can't see spending $500 for one of these thingsbut what do I know? Shortly after Forbes ran an article about the product, Wallflower sold out of its inventory of Frankensteined picture frames. Left with nice cashflow from its rising order volume, and needing more certainty in its supply chain than Weird Stuff Warehouse could provide, Wallflower recently gave up on the whole recycled kick and started buying components from manufacturers, the way most computer companies do.

With the new manufacturing strategy, the company is able to offer more features and bigger screens, but it had to raise its prices since these components are more expensive. Although I imagine they save a fortune in assembly costs, since they no longer have to dismantle laptops to get their parts.

There is a thriving economy in the leftover computer business. Another company in this space, RetroBox, makes money coming and going. First of all, they take in used computers from businesses that no longer need of them, and carefully scrub the hard disks clean of datacompanies are so worried that old machines will get out into the world with sensitive data on them that they'll pay nicely for this service. Then, of course, RetroBox is free to re-sell the scrubbed hardware to new users or to re-builders like Wallflower.

But back to Wallflower. I love this story, since it combines the identification of an unusual but growing market space (digital picture frames) with the extremely clever, low-cost startup strategy of making its first products from unloved, unsold, obsolete technology. The founders knew full well that strategy wouldn't scale if they became successful, and they were able to switch to more ordinary production methods when they did, about one-and-a-half years ahead of plan.

As I said earlier, this manufacturing model isn't completely new: In 2000, startup Scout Electromedia released the Modo, a pager-like

I allready have a diamond video card!
Just like the one below:

picture

How about Weirdstuff Warehouse. That was my favorite back when I lived behind the tofu curtain. It was called "Computer Surplus" back in the day and was a museum of old and really old computer hardware. Guaranteed to swell your pocket protector.

• National Museum of American History: Everything from a Morse's original telegraphs, Bell's original telephones, an Enigma, an ENIAC, a Hollorith Tabulating Machine, to a Trash-80 in the Information Age Exhibit located in the lower level
• Air and Space: The Wright Brother's Flyer, the Spirit of St Louis, the X-1, and if you visit after Decemeber of 2003, head out to Dulles Airport to see Udvar Hazy Center which will have even more aircraft including a SR-71, the Enola Gay, and the original space shuttle Enterprise.

In Boston, check out the Computer History Museum

In Chicago

• the Museum of Science and Industry is worth a visit.
• Plus there are plenty of Frank LLoyd Wright buildings to visit.

In the Bay Area there is

• the The Tech Museum in San Jose which is okay but if you plan far enough in advance (reservations are required)
• the Computer Museum History Center in Mountain View is probably the best collection of computers since the 50's.
• Intel has a museum at it's San Jose campus.
• Also dont miss a visit to Weird Stuff in Sunnyvale.

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

whether weirdstuff carries any surplus servers. They could use an extra few right about now...

Weird Stuff used to sell lots of hardware with labels that said "Guaranteed not to work."

Essentially, all software says that.

(The labels went on to say "if it does work, bring it back and we'll replace it with one that doesn't")

you mean something like this

An old indigo irix box can be had for sub 500 bucks with a 4-8 gig scsi disk in silicon valley, go to weird stuff.

If anyone out there is in the Orlando, Florida area, and you've got any old Mac stuff to get rid of or if you know of anyplace that's getting rid of old Apple equipment for cheap or free, please drop me a line! (The BEST place I've found for this sort of collecting is Weird Stuff, www.weirdstuff.com, but that's in Sunnyvale California.)

There was a wonderful coffee-table book published a few years ago titled 'AppleDesign: The Work of the Apple Industrial Design Group' which goes great with my collection; it really shows off the design talent behind these old computers.

More than likely, they'll dump them on an electronics surplus place like Weird Stuff Warehouse. Remember "Interactive Network", the gadget that was going to let you play along with TV game shows like Jeopardy? When they went under, Weird Stuff liquidated their stock of the remotes, coffee cups, gym bags, t-shirts, and all sorts of other trade-show goodies. That was 5 years ago or so... I think they STILL have some of the gym bags. I've still got a couple T-shirts.
I was looking for a web site for Interactive Network, and came across This... History is repeating itself. They're trying to make something back from their patents too.

Close to the topic... People have already posted how to use Macs as terminals.

Further Confusion is a yearly science fiction-like convention devoted to anthropomorphics. Since most of the members are computer addicts, we wanted to set up a computer room.

One friend of mine, Richard Penner, heard that the local Weird Stuff Warehouse had a special on old Mac IIs. $5 per machine, as is.

My VW Vanagon was pressed into service, and we filled it with ancient Macintoshes. With each old Mac having about 5 Mhz of power, we barely fit about 350 Mhz of computing power into my van.

Of the seventy, Richard put together about forty fully functional terminals. That, a good Linux server, and a hub, made for a good, cheap terminal room.

• http://www.lowendmac.net
• http://www.edprint.demon.co.uk/se
• http://weitzman.net/classicmacs

there are of course, many more similar sites. If anyone has done anything cool post it here! Also a great resource if you live in the SF bay area is Weird Stuff, they have tons of old macs for sale and the salespeople are quite knowledgable.

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.