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Great Surplus Stores?
An old friend of mine, Todd San Martin, passed on a link to me of a great surplus place in Orlando that has lots of old nasa gear and more, and it made me think that it's probably time to talk about great surplus shops again. Not just the aforementioned skycraft or the well known Weird Stuff , although feel free to dicuss those too, but I thought it would make a cool post as a jumping off point for people to talk about their favorite shops especially those near aerospace facilities, both online and off.
This place has everything an electronics nut could want. And more.
Not sure if they have an online presence. It wouldn't matter. Most of the fun is going there and scouring through the thousands of bins full of assorted electronic components. Whenever I've needed parts for any electronic project I have never failed to find the parts at Active Surplus.
Is that a real poncho? I mean, is that a Mexican poncho or is that a Sears poncho?
Goodwill Computerworks has great stuff. No website though.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
I have many good memories of dumpster diving at Weird Stuff. One of the only places I actually discovered descent loot. As I recall on one night I pulled out a functional 10base LNC nic, a couple of old but good CD-Rom games, and lots of precious anti stat bags!
They are the first place I look for mechanical or electronic parts, speaker wire, or just to browse through bizarre military surplus.
If they don't know what something is, they'll just make something up and sell it off cheap. A very fun surplus store. I strongly reccomend it if you are in the area.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
http://www.meci.com/ You want a generator? They got that. You want a Xerox Star? They've had 'em. You want an AT&T unix workstation from god knows when? They got 'em. Need 10Kv capacitors? Sure! Need a freezer? No, no, I mean a WALK IN FREEZER! They GOT THAT? Mannequin parts? THAT TOO!
Not exactly NASA stuff, but Mendelson's in Dayton, Ohio has just about every electronic device I've ever looked for. If you want a resistor, for instance, they probably have a hundred thousand of the resistor you want.
I am dictator^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H beloved leader of a Middle Eastern country, and am sick and tired of the damn Shi'ites rebelling. I'm looking for a place where I can find reasonably priced SCUD missiles a small amount of Nerve Gas (Sarin would do nicely), and possilbly a small nuclear reactor with which I could power my underground bunker - just in case the US decides I'm next. Any suggestions?
1) Check "Post Anonymously"
2) Click "Submit"
for those in Silicon Valley, halted specialties co (HSC) http://www.halted.com is a great place. It beats buying fans online where shipping is outrageous, and you can buy resistors individually.
Disclaimer: I did not RTFA.
Around where I live the state holds an auction every week. You can get some great hardware if you're a geek there. Older AIX mainframes, SPARC-III's, etc.
I bought 12 Pentium-2's there for $50 total (no monitors). Also bought a bunch of Cisco 2501s on the cheap there as well (I think they went for 1/pop, no one else bid on them).
Basic procedure was:
Show up, see equipment, submit a sealed bid, get contacted within a day, go pay, go pick up your hardware.
If you live in a state capitol here in the US of A, check to see if they have auctions. If they do, go there, greatest thing next to sliced bread.
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
If you are near Chicago or Milwalkee, check out American Science & Surplus for all of your unneeded science surplus stuff.
I have been to the Chicago store and wandered around for a good couple of hours. I need to get to the smaller store near Fermilab (although I have heard it is not as big)
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
... is about the only electronics surplus outfit in the Seattle area, as far as I'm aware.
In fact, Vetco is about the only decent electronic-component reseller of any kind around here, now that Future-Active Electronics has wisely decided that only Canadians are interested in buying electronic parts.
The last time I was in Vetco, they were planning to expand their overall component inventory greatly to pick up some of the slack from the former Active Electronics store just up the road. Go buy some stuff from them now so they don't vanish too!
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
Go to Computer Surplus Science (not positive about the last word), located in the industrial district.
They have literally thousands of computers of all types..from old Commodores to 1.5 GHz machines, all at 40% or less of retail price. I got the Dell Inspiron 8100 that I am using right now for a mere $800, and this was when 8100s were top of the line. Believe me, they're niiiice.
whether weirdstuff carries any surplus servers. They could use an extra few right about now...
As much as RadioShack sucks, if you know how to shop them, they will devalue most of their products to ridiculously low amounts at a steady pace. When I used to work there, we would on slow days, check the "devalued list" and find everything that has been devalued below 99 cents. These could all be products which had at one time been very expensive, upwards of hundreds of dollars. Eventually they make it down to the 99, 49 and even 0 cents range. (At 0, we would only have to check them out, pay nothing and take it home with us) Rarely would this produce anything really useful, but we got some interesting things, usually in surplus (a box of 50 old leather cell phone pouches that still kinda fit our modern cells for 1 cent each, originally 69.99) , various universal remotes for 49 cents each. We even found a couple old analog cell phones for 99c. My friend got a box of 50 mini butane torches for 0 cents each! Note: good luck finding a way to do this in store, but stuff used to appear on the website occasionally as "web specials"
99, 49 and 0 cents - almost what radioshack merchandise is worth
Dig in the trash behind the computer science and engineering buildings of a local university. You will find a lot of good stuff that can still be useful. I was able to pick up a large hunk of copper and some ibm model m keyboards just last week.
Its free.
Boeing surplus in Kent, Washington.
a il /
You can get anything from an outdated computer to slightly used machine tools to airline seats to chunks of titanium.
http://www.boeing.com/assocproducts/surplus/ret
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.
* Condoms
* Beer
* Slashdot Coders
Why does your fantasy not surprise me, you FILTHY FAGGOT?
Addy for the interested is:
10805 Central Ave NE,
Albuquerque, NM
87123-2727
There's another surplus store a few doors down that I haven't been in yet (hey, stop throwing things at me), but seems to be better kept up. Judging from experience in now closed surplus places, well kept-up means that their prices are higher and they have less interesting stuff.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
Furniture, computers, magazines, video tapes (all blanked, I think, with some funny labels), tools, miscellaneous electronics that I couldn't identify, bulk materials... Fun browsing.
No Laughing Allowed!
I'm a somewhat well known sculptor and when asked to do lectures at various schools across the country I request to see there surplus facilities.
Just recently in fact I found to my surprise that one university had a large closet filled with steel balls that NASA deemed not suitable for there testing purposes.
Needless to say I spent my whole paycheck there.
eBay?
You can find pretty much anything for sale on a given day.
I wonder if any Texans have offered to sell them parts from a slightly used space shuttle. http://www.skycraftsurplus.com/sell.htm
I grew up in Orlando & just LOVE Skycrap! I have wasted many an hour picking through junk there. I have also spent more money than I want to think about.
I haven't found the same experience in my new (6 years now) home of Miami.
"Bishops and Bookies live off the irrational hopes of mankind." Bertrand Russell
When I was in college, I hit the MSU Salvage Yard (Located here) every couple of weeks.
I've seen everything from (lots of ) lab equipment, to a PDP-11, to the old clock from the campus belltower, to whole pallets of workstations for sale there over the years.
I still try to swing by there a couple of times a year, to see if there is anything really really cool lying around.
While it may be a long trip for many people, check with large schools near you to see if they have public sales of stuff that was lying around.
But, this is the first thing that came to mind. http://www.surplusrifle.com . They themselves don't actually sell rifles, but have provided me with a lot of fun information about old WWII and earlier rifles that are still available.
I'm really geeked really, because I picked up in a 1946 M44 Soviet rifle last weekend. Unissued... never been fired. The weapon's been around for 56 years wrapped up in paper and passed around but never actually handled, cleaned, and fired. I'm geeked... really geeked. I've taken it apart a few times, cleaned greasy goop out of it for about 6 hours, and just totally enjoyed the whole process. I'm hoping this weekend, weather permitting, I'll get to take it out and finally test the thing out.
I tell ya what... I got that thing home, tore the wax paper protection and twine off it, then the underlying paper wrap, rubbed a cloth over it to get some extra grease off and was amazed. Here is an unfired Soviet weapon with a hammer and sicle on it. It's almost like finding a PDP-11 at a gargage sale to me... that had never been used. Granted, an unused PDP-11 doesn't exist; but it's almost that "neat" to me. Fifty six years sitting in a storage bin and I'll be the first human being to fire it.. how neat and geeky is that?
I can pull it apart and inspect the workmanship that went into it so long ago. The engineering that has gone into making it over the yers before it's actual production... the circumstances that lead to it's creation and it's reason for being stuck in a bin for so long. Totally geeky to me.
Granted, I'm going to use it to punch holes in inatimate objects rather than try and make a Beowulf cluster out of them... but it's still a huge amount of fun.
When I lived in Houston, Tx there was a place called EPO. Tons of stuff, stacked everywhere. It was awesome. Got stuff for a 4 computer homenetwork for 30 bucks, including hub.
I've since moved to Philly and am looking for something similar. Anyone know? King of Prussia area would be optimal, however, I'll go nearly anywhere.... Anyone?
When in Portland, visit Wacky Willy's. Or Honoloulou for that matter, though I haven't been to that one.
I can't begin to describe the incredibly varied assortment of things they sell -- from bins of plastic dolls heads to old vaxen to lab glass. They host some really cool events too.
Gateway Electronics (not the moo moo store) here in San Diego has an excellent treasure trove of older electronics and parts. Really cool stuff!
Here in the Minneapolis/St Paul area, there are a few cool surplus places around. My favorite happens to be Ax-Man. They have a lot of total crap, but they also manage to have a lot of neat electrical stuff too. A lot of that is also crap, but there is enough cool stuff floating around to make an EE major like me think up some cool ideas :)
The Defense Reaquisition Marketing Office is a great place to find miscellaneous items dirt cheap. In Dayton, WPAFB has an office open to the public. http://www.wpafb.af.mil/drmo/index.htm for more details.
* RealDolls
You'll only get one from a geek who gets married. Sometimes not even then. Not Surplus
* Commodore 64s
Make nice web servers. Not surplus.
* Brain Transplants
There could never be enough to provide governments with brains - sorry. Not surplus.
* Bending Unit
Hey, my unit "bends", and the wife likes it that way. Most definately not surplus.
* Condoms
Well, maybe some of the geeks around here have those.
* Beer
???? Surplus beer? Never. I'm Canadian.
* Slashdot Coders
OK. Slashdot "Speel Chekers", duplicate catchers and editors who catch dupes are needed, not more
coders - I'll give you that one. But I doubt they're very interesting, so maybe not.
* Windows NT 3.5.1 Licenses
There was, as far as I'm concerned, a surplus once production of those things went above zero units. Interesting? Nope.
Hmmmm - 1 for 8. You need to improve big time, bud.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
Finest store I've ever been in, they just switched locations and look much less ghetto, although they have less space. Related story
Check out ioquake3.org for a great, free, First-Person Shooter engine!
WeirdStuff used to be good back when it was owned by the original owner. After he passed away, the store went downhill. Recently they tried selling a Commodore 64 to me for $50 as is and refused to test it. Ran to the local Salvation Army and grabbed a working one for $10 and that included the disk drive as well. WeirdStuff doesn't seem to sell anything useful unless you have a need for flakey monitors, Sun Workstations/Macs, Pentium/486 class PCs, or obscure computer parts. Don't expect to pay surplus prices for them though unless you participate in one of their auctions.
C & H Sales in Pasadena on Colorado
Apex in the Valley (Sunland?)
But there's also the TRW swapmeet in the TRW parkinglot in Manhattan Beach last Saturday of the month.
There used to be the General Dynamics swapmeet in San Bernardino, IIRC first saturday of the month.
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.
And the brethren went away edified.
If you're from Minnesota, you've gotta go to Ax-Man. It used to be a complete mess that required a LOT of digging around to find gold, but they've cleaned it up in recent years. I used to go there to buy stepper motors, solar panels and light sensors to build little robots from scratch. They always have the wackiest stuff - I recall dentist's chairs, 60 year old computers, ceramic hands used in molding latex gloves, gas masks, electronics parts of every shape and size, pulleys, doll heads, fuzzy christmas present tags from the 50's... The signs hanging about are a riot. Serious amounts of teddy ruxpins to be hacked. I recommend the St. Paul location!
If you are in northern New Mexico the classic is Ed Grothus' Black Hole, aka Los Alamos Sales Co which is overflowing with surplus crap from Los Alamos National Lab. Links and pics here:k -hole/w ord.html ?pg=5
http://www.wps.com/about-WPS/personal/blac
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.04/e
and LANL itself has a great surplus sale once a month on the third thursday, or it was at least when I worked there.
Wrong. Mod down please.
it's called 'eBay'...
Gone are the days of walking thru musty warehouses full of neat stuff you can take home for a song.
After all, this is 2003, and virtual rummaging from the comfort of home is all the rage.
http://www.ax-man.com/
Ax-Man rocks. And all thier little signs on this are funny.
Some prices are good, but other prices are ridiculous. I picked up an old HP Netserver this afternoon for $30, and they are currently selling on eBay for a few hundred dollars. By the same token, they had SGI O2's for $500 which can be had cheaper from other places. If you were big time into reselling surplus stuff you could take advantages of palents of DEC Alphas for $50!
From memory, when I was 16... close to 10 years ago:
- capacitors the size of pint glasses
- a wall of "building block" chips, like you'd play with in 1000-level electronics classes.. at really cheap rates
- mini-switches by the handful
- random keypads, with or without protruding cable
- a wall of magnets, ranging from magnetized-paperclip strength to "do not operate near pacemakers"
- Oscilloscopes clearly designed for use by squid or other multi-tentacled beasts
and racks and racks of things which, to this day, I don't think I could identify. My brother and I spent hours there dreaming up the things we wanted to build. Which, I suppose, is the sign of a good geek.
Anyone know of a place like this in the DC area?
Well, yeah. I guess I don't really understand the fine art of the surplus. Maybe I budget too well.
These guys have a constantly moving stock of computer hardware and technology from up to 20 years back. One such piece that they have on display (unknown as to if it's for sale) is an ancient 16" 5MB IBM HD. They also have ancient Sun systems, servers, server racks, and a ton of miscelleneous hardware that one could spend a lifetime decyphering the usage of. It's in Tukwila, on Andover Park West, just a block south of Southcenter Mall.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
My two favorites are Surplus Stuff in Sacramento and Mike Quinn's in San Leandro. I've been trading at Mike Quinn's since 1972. It is an icon of East Bay electronics. Mike Quinn passed away about 20 years ago, but the torch has been carried by his daughter and Jay. About a month ago Jay sold me a 1hp 3-phase motor, brand new, for my lathe. Cost - $10. Retail price - $288.00.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Try Government Surplus Auctions if you want some drug dealer cars, or heavy industrial equipment. Also check your local University for a surplus store and periodic auctions like UW's. If you want to get your garage genetics lab off the ground and don't mind using ten-year-old equipment, these outlets can be ideal.
Also, non-profits can sometimes get the surplus stuff free or at a cut rate.
Here at the University of Utah they have the "Property Redistribution" bullding, aka 'Surplus'. They sell everything remaindered by the university, usually really old; They've had every manner of medical electronics, musical instruments, computers and office furniture -- even cars )if you don't mind Ford Tauruses and Chevy Luminas). Right now they have a Sun 690MP and SGI Iris up for bid.
I've bought at least 500 bucks a crap fromt eh in teh alst two years: 3 Powermacs, 1 laptop, 2 monitors, 2 hubs and an SGI Multilink adpater (for $10 bucks that I sold on eBay for $300).
I've heard similar stories about UCLA, Oregon State and Texas A Basically, the universities strongest curiculae will have surplus from that, and for the UofU it's medical and computers.
Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
hahahah ...
... ah well.
Naw, I have a girlfriend. I was just suggesting things that other slashdot readers might be interested in.
I don't think there's a surplus on Hot Grits and Natalie Portman
American Science and Surplus on Milwaukee Avenue. Be prepared to waste large amounts of time there.
Still looking for the equivalent here in San Francisco...
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
I haven't been there in about four years and at the time Ed Groethus, the owner, didn't seem to be in such great health, but I think the place is still there.
The Black Whole near Los Alamos, NM is quite a site. Most of the surplus stuff is from the nearby national lab. The place has been there maybe 40 years and is filled with crazy nuclear related stuff. Ed Groethus, the guy that owns the place seems to be very fond of much of his junk, so it can be tricky to get him to part with the good stuff.
Everyone calls the place "The Black Hole", but I think the real name is something more boring like "Los Alamos Salvage". It's definitely worth the trip if you're within 500 miles and are mesmerized by bits of shiny metal.
jeff
For the rest of us who aren't like that, the anti-privacy ideals apparently espoused by eBay senior management make it a site unworthy of using or recommending. If I browse the aisles of a physical surplus store, I'm comfortably anonymous, and even if the clerk thinks my selections are unusual compared to their notions of normalcy, I don't have to worry that the store will hand over everything they know about me with a wink and a nod to the first person asking about me who claims to represent law enforcement. Because what they know about me is very little, especially if I choose to pay cash.
You don't have to be a criminal to value privacy from the government; you just have to understand how government powers can be abused.
I've taken 7 of their small shopping carts full of stuff to the back. They are the best recycling center for computer junk out there. Our high school kept about a full dumpster out of a landfill thanks to them. Now go spend some money there and buy all our old junk.
Tim Smith - Ramblings from Nerd Land
SkyCrap is indeed a fun place. They always have what looks like a row of ancient disk cabinets lined up out front, and a huge bin of useless popcorn boards just inside the door. Their capacitor aisle is really scary, I'm sure it would be useful for those backyard railgun projects. I mostly find myself there when I need some weird connector or a length of cable cut. Ony my last visit I picked up some case fans, and considerably cheaper than I could have any place that sells them as PC hardware.
Java: the COBOL of the new millenium.
Back in the day, I used to go to Collins Surplus in Cedar Rapids. This is the Collins that makes aircraft avionics and a bunch of radio-related products. I remember they had stacks of HP o-scopes from floor to ceiling, and you could always find some oddwad prototype (or pieces thereof) in the parts bins.
Just junk food for thought...
Gentoo's emerge/portage is better
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
I moved from Kissimmee, FL to Alpharetta, GA a little over a hear ago, and the one thing I miss the most -- being an electronics geek as well as a computer geek -- is Skycraft (linked in the summary). That place kicks butt.
;)
I found many things there that I haven't been able to find anywhere since. RF transistors, various ICs, and even neat little LCD displays (50 cents each!) that I used in a couple MP3-player projects (via parallel port)...
I so miss that place. The poor guy at the Kissimmee Radio Shack who told me about that place doesn't understand the amount of business he lost from me
NGWave - Fast Sound Editor for Windows
They have everything from a wall of ancient Macs to a room of esoteric motherboards to ca. 1970 video surveilance systems.
And if you buy bulk CAT-5 from them, the colorblind guy will try to crimp the ends for you and will deny vehemently that it's taking him 10 minutes per end because he can't see the difference in the colors.
It's a fun place.
Anyone know of a similar place (electronics surplus) in the Atlanta area? I miss Skycraft very much since I moved from the Orlando area, and have been looking, without success, for a similar place here for the last year...
Down there a Radio Shack employee pointed me to Skycraft (I was looking for RF transistors), and I'd been going there weekly ever since. Now that I'm in Georgia, I'm desparately seeking a similar store...
Anyone?
NGWave - Fast Sound Editor for Windows
Anyone know of an electrical surplus in Denver Colorado? I could really use one.
I do security
http://www.compgeeks.com/
It doesn't get any better than this. Some really cool stuff ends up here. Pretty much every type of fitting, wiring, harness, computer, rack cage, etc etc etc etc etc ends up here. It's truly like being in a candy store. Bring your cash though, 'cause that's all they accept.
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
If you're in San Diego, Industrial Liquidators is fun. Mostly mechanical stuff, but some electronic gear. I bought a World's Fair icepick there (ever try to find an icepick?)
Then there's Murphy's in El Cajon. Want the voice hardware used in talking coke machines, or a gas cap with a built in mechanical fuel guage?
There used to be another one down the street from Murphy's that was more electronics oriented, but I don't recall the name, and I'm not sure it's still there. I try to make a pilgrimage to one or two of them every time I go down there, but I don't get to very often.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
[I'd like to say that I haven't been to one of these for YEARS so I don't know if they still happen...]
... and it worked!
Well, it used to be a closely-guarded secret, but the secret's out now, so I don't care anymore. They have surplus sales on the first wednesday of every month. GOOD stuff, too! The last time I was there, there was a HUGE non-working laser for sale, make an offer, only qualified offers accepted(ie: you could reasonably hope to fix the damn thing - the prof offering it didn't want it sitting as a curiousity in some whackos living room).
Oscilloscopes - $10
Mac SE's - $5
etc etc - $cheap
Last time (like I said, years ago), I picked up 3 Mac SEs (two dead but fixable) and an SE/30 - after working on them, two of the SEs were ressurected, and the SE/30 worked perfectly (and still does).
The BEST PART however, was that on one of the SEs that had been presumed dead, it was the ROM that was dead, and not the hard drive. "BONUS", I thought! "I'll just swap the ROM from the third one", (which was well and truly dead)
So the hard drive was alive... and it was FILLED with some UW secretary's data. OOPS!
I never had any use for that SE after all (gave the other one to my little cousin, gave the 'shell' of the third to charity). After bringing it back to life, I never got around to reformatting that SE, and I haven't touched it since. To this day, it sits in the basement, a testament to a gargantuan screwup on the part of the U Waterloo staff. I guess I should wipe the drive and chuck it - It's just taking up space.
PS: do those sales still happen?
Active Surplus is great for motors and random electronics bits and pieces, but their computer-related product selection leaves a bit to be desired. If you're looking for computer stuff, you might want to check Above All Electronics at Bloor and Bathurst (on Bloor, north side, slightly west of Honest Ed's). A lot more computer-related stuff there. They had a pile of gutted 486-era laptops and laptop displays the last time I checked - great fun! :)
- Ed.
I used to live in orlando
I shopped at Skycraft to build my first Peltier Cooler for my Cel 300 A
While not necessarily Surplus, they do normally have alot of strange stuff turn up (including a puppet/costume used to make the movie Labyrinth). They normally have thousands of CD's, tons of clothing, lots and lots of camera equipment, camping stuff, random computer stuff (got a IBM3725 terminal there for $5 couple years back, and a 24port cabletron management switch for $90) and other junk. I usually go by there a couple times a year just to see what turns up.
TM
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
Don't let the name fool you. Sure, the selection may be limited at times, but in general, this place rocks. Everything you would want to find from drill bits to keyboards to the same SEGA Channel adaptor that's been there for years. There should be one in every Canadian city if you go looking. Otherwise, try Here
Also, from what I can remember, Ribtor Surplus in Calgary is a fantastic shop. I picked up an old WWI-vintage helmet just for kicks but they have much more. More like a Princess Auto for non-auto parts and a lot of military surplus.
- Relativistic? That's barely Newtonian!
Surplustronics is the ultimate surplus store.
It's in a section of town known as "Slavic Village", just south of downtown Cleveland. Not as much fun as a lot of the places other people are describing, but I've found a good deaal of odd equipment there. One time I needed a power supply for my laptop and they happened to have an old power supply for a rooftop antenna rotor that was the right voltage. Ran just fine with the laptop and only cost me about $13. They've also had things like old reel-to-reel tape drives, VT100 terminals, and some pretty freaky medical looking shit. It's much better for electronic components though when you need to get your circuit design on... Kind of wish there was a cooler place in Clevo though.
Un-news
When I do projects, I almost always end up with a combination of parts from three sources:
Mo' better organized now than in the early '90s, and Dick is still hand-writing invoices. Recently I had a hard time finding 40-pin DIP sockets, 'till I dropped in on the folks on Hancock St north of Fillmore...
active surplus[already mentioned] . supermetronics and rotblots[for raw materials].
plus in anyone is ever in tokyo
there are alot of surplus stores around akihibara[sp?] much more specialized.
At the risk of blowing one's own horn, I have listings of Bay Area (California) and Puget Sound region surplus stores and swap meets at this link. There's also links to other resources.
Enjoy!
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
Being from Hamilton, Ontario, one of my favorite things to do was cruise the Queen Street surplus shops in Toronto 'way back when.
But now that I'm in Idaho, there really isn't *any* surplus place I've found. At least, none within a two-hour drive, which is the same as "just around the corner" in Idaho.
Frad
This is a sample sig. Press F1 to personalize.
There *used* to be a whole street of them along Canal, of which the kings were Canal Surplus, presided over by the friendly and way-overinformed Stan, and Space Metal. ...
Of the once mighty twenty or so, only Industrial Plastics, which isn't really surplus, is left. Down on Chambers ( few blocks south) there used to be Alexander's Hardware, largest, cheapest, and sometimes best of them all for mech gear.
Tell ya, though, I'm selling off everything I ever bought at those places this very month, from steppers to 1/4 horsepower to gears, to screws and bolts, to tiny Japanese demon faces. Anybody want to buy the stock of an entire prototyping lab cheap better contact me now. The drill press is already spoken for, as are the three milk crates of SCSI and monitor cables, the bags of glass tubes, the fine rod stock,
The times, they are a changin.
Rustin
Data is the lever, rigor the fulcrum, brains the force that drives it all.
Yeah, EPO rocks ... they recently changed their name and I can't think of the new name off the top of my head. Remember going in there one time and spotting a peltier cooler screwed to a telescope assembly that was going for $1.50. I bought 10 of those things for no good reason ... seemed like a good idea at the time. Oh well.
anything even REMOTELY similar in Vancouver?
One place comes to mind... Cal's Computer Warehouse on the north side of Grandview Highway west of Costco and east of Superstore. Open late 7 days per week. Wacky place. Some new product but mostly surplus and used. Hardware and software by the scoopful. NICs, audio cards, cables, adaptors, and monitors galore. I picked up a bunch of Wyse 60s there once (they dozens to sift through) for a team of programmers' serial debug terminals. Prices are so-so, but they've been willing to haggle. There's also an old microcomputer museum in the back with some treasures that aren't for sale. Check it out.
SFU used to have science & tech equipment auctions once in a while. UBC might also.
I worked at OIA at the end of 2001, there was a space suit display,
I remember thinking "this is the new USPS uniform"
(remember the Democrats mail "problems")
Lamest troll ever.
I don't know if they're still around, but when I lived in Atlanta, there was a small chain called Peachtree Salvage.
They were the exclusive sellers of damaged UPS (United Parcel Service) goods. If it got damaged (even just the box) by UPS, it would end up there.
We got all kinds of great stuff there when I was a kid. When PacMan came out on the 2600, we got it for $6 instead of the $50 list. The box was damaged and the manual was missing, but it worked fine.
Bigbook shows a "Peachtree Quality Salvage"... that is probably it.
Nothing to see here; Move along.
Alas, the Bloomington store is no more - I went there recently and there was just a hole in the ground. I guess my evil Teddy Ruxpin automaton finally took over the store, drilled a hole in space-time and destroyed it.
You can see some of my (admittedly crummy :) handiwork at the St. Paul or Fridley store - just look for the display with the dozen car speakers attached to a metal screen.
The nice thing about Ax-man surplus is that you can find other things there too; marbles, wooden blocks, plastic bits, nuts and bolts, baby doll heads, stepper motors, flat files, chrome trash cans, prom dresses, tons of laboratory glassware, aluminum stock, rollerblade wheels, nylon washers and blocks, remote control car starters, 500 gallon tanks, and really nice employees who are always full of suggestions for your project/halloween costume/plans for world domination.
I worked there for 2 plus years, and have yet to have a job that challenged my brain and body like Ax-man. It's like a museum where the gift shop is all around you. If you are in the cities, it's a must see! Say hi to David and Bill :)
The GPS in your car (that the dealer installed to know where it is should he have to have it repo'd) will tell the authorities that you stopped at the surplus store. The minitature ID tags in the used bio-hazard suit you carried out the door will synchronize with the digital video captured as you cleared the register and your face is on file as we speak. They're everywhere...o h m y g o d! ! !
What makes you think eBay has a corner on the big-brother market. If you fear black helicopters, you're not safe anywhere.
I didn't and wouldn't recommend eBay. They ripped me off with a c'card scam that took 6 months to settle, and then only because the bank helped...eBay ignored me. I simply tried to point out that things like we used to find in back rooms and storage units are more likely to be found online. It is clear that my use of eBay as a general example was far too specific for your present disposition (AC's are like that, I know...). eBay frouqad and google tracking is another issue for another day.
They have some cool stuff. But thier customer service pretty much sucked the last couple of times I went in there. Although I my understanding is the computer shop they used to have in the rear was actually a diffrent ocmpany, talk about a big rip off! Gadgeteers on Westpark was cool... but it's long gone.
Pre-1984 Canal Street in New York City would have been at the top of the list.
Now, there are just a few stores near 6th ave that have surplus gizmos.
Unfortunatly, I've been either too young or too broke to have really taken advantage of it before its decline into an Asian flea market. At least on one trip with my Dad I picked up a 27.5mm lens for a 35mm camera. It had started out as a 55mm lens, until someone used a diamond saw on it.
Building 19 (and all its fractional branches scattered throughout the Boston area) would sell the most bizaar stuff - mostly insurance salvage. When the windows started popping out of the John Hancock tower in Boston and crashing to the street below, they would be replaced with 4x8 sheets of plywood. After a while, the Hancock tower looked like it had some kind of plywood pox. Eventually it was found that the windows were not up to spec and all needed to be replaced. Shortly thereafter, Bldg 19 advertised 4x8 glass table tops. They weren't allowed to say where they got the plate glass, but they did say it would look much better as your dining room table than a sheet of plywood. That was 12 or 15 years ago, but I still laugh my ass off when I think about it.
Forget www.eli.com, in Cambridge, MA (Boston) -- while it was good when I was a kid and went ther ein 1982, it sucks now. I live in the area and let me tell you, what they charge for their overage sparc 20s and old crap just isn't worth it. Not even close. I know they do a lot of business mail order these days, maybe that explains the horrible attitude. When ever you try to get someone there to ask a question it is like pulling teeth. On top of that, they sell stuff as new that doesn't work. These guys are cheeseballs, I don't know how they stay in business sell Sparcstation 10s for $120. Twenty years ago, this was the tech mecca of mass, but now they suck, and not just a little bit. I hope they go out of business.
I'm surprised that BGMicro http://www.bgmicro.com/ hasn't been mentioned yet.
Although they don't have the huge supply of strange stuff that most surplus stores have, they do carry a lot of components and they have an excellent customer sales reputation.
Ever since the computer modding comunity found them, they have been shifting their focus a bit to cater to the modders.
Or perhaps trotski has been replaced by zippy? CNN seems unaware of both developments ...
Here in Melbourne, FL we're even closer to NASA, etc. and there's Astro Too, http://www.astrotoo.com/ which has all sorts of old stuff Uncle spent a LOT of money for but now does not want. You walk in, and it even SMELLS like old electronics, and the owner's a wheeler-dealer, which makes it more fun than Wal-Mart even if they didn't have the best trash-pickings in town.
I wish I could store all the perfectly-good electronics I've seen him just toss out on their loading dock. I stopped by the other day and grabbed a free "old" IBM keyboard -- the kind you can't get anymore which really-clicks when you press the keys -- along with the small item I was there to purchase. Great store.
JMR
Try e-gold - (contact me). I'm NOT e-
Distel was always the place to go. About twice a year I'd trudge over to them and see what they had. Mind you that was 15+ years ago and they're still going strong.
I've somewhat had my fill of the Arizona State University scrapyard (mostly half-dissected x86 boxes and old printers). Where else is good? I'd like a place where they let you dissassemble the machines and just buy what you want (I really don't need the 486/33 mainboard if all I want is the case to modify)
It's just like a fascist dictatorship, without the punctual rail service!
Apache Reclamation and Electronics (Apache & 3rd Ave) - they are a litteral mechanical and electronics junkyard - big or small, they have it all (I have noted a couple of C02 lasers there, as well as some larger heavy equipment, labware, motors, pumps, hydraulics, wire, pneumatics, etc)
Equipment Exchange (515 E Grant Street - behind BOB off of 7th Street) - lots and lots of major electronic and industrial FAB equipment here - ovens, wave solder lines, industrial robots, electron microscopes, regular microscopes, and other such things. Lots of small funky stuff too (be sure to check out the basement area for real fun items).
EliTek (EMC) 3855 N. 29th Ave - mostly PC and used/surplus business equipment. Be wary, they can rip you if you don't know what you are looking at/for. I have gotten some real sweet deals though (recently, an HP LaserJet 6P, 25000 page count - cost me $100.00 - bought a toner cartridge, and got me one hell of a sweet laser printer to replace a crappy ink jet that was always clogging or running out of ink - for under $200!). Sometimes they have funky stuff come in (recently, they had a bunch of Sony 15" LCDs come in - most were broke, but I bought a couple to swap parts for $20.00 - have yet to play with them to see if I can get one working, but for $20.00 it is worth the shot!).
Ok, out in Scottsdale there is the Electronics Goldmine, mainly an online store. Also, I like All Electronics in LA for parts, too.
I know of several other places, mainly online parts stores, but most of those I haven't purchased from, so I can't reccommend them...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
UC Davis has a pretty good surplus unit called the Bargain Barn. You can find lots of test/medical/older computers/printers/monitors. I know they have a lot of cheap PII's - my department just gave them a batch to sell.
Apache Surplus has a little of everything. I am amazed at all the new stuff every time I go there.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
if you want "No More Hiroshimas" then I say "You First. No More Pearl Harbors."
If you knwo any academic types, you might try asking them as well.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
The best place for surplus stuff is hamfests. Big hamfests, like Dayton. There's some friggin surplus there for ya. Here in northern New England we like to go to Hosstraders. May 2nd & 3rd!!!
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
MC Howard Electronics. web site
All kinds of random computer and electronics gear there, last I checked. It's been there forever, too -- since 1980. And Mr. Howard generally knows what he's doing and is pretty helpful. The prices vary, but you can find some worthwhile stuff. If you need a funky connector or cable or if you need to make an old PC work, he might be able to help. They've programmed EEPROMs for me, helped me rewire an external disk enclosure for SCSI, etc.
How can I not include a mention of a store whose motto is 'When only second best will do'?
Most of what they sell are fairly recent vintage PCs, but occasionally you can find some gems. I've kitted out much of my home network with old equipment purchased there. And good news for the rest of you: They'll ship anywhere.
Here's the linkMy fave is the Army Navy Depot in Jacksonville Florida. I am a military surplus "junkie" and this place always delivers the fix! It has everything from Military Training Manuals to Flight Suits. You name it and if its Mil' Surp' you will find it there!!! They also special order stuff and buy used gear! Checc out their web-site: http://www.aarmynavydepot.com
"This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time."
It's called the Country Boy Store. In the Kentucky countryside off of I-24 between Paducah KY and Clarksville TN. 40mm antiaircraft gun out front. Their facility is essentially three old barns and the remains of a real old country store, all kind of nailed together. Inside, lots of old military surplus, shirts, hats, BDU's, etc. Plus an enormous stockpile of guns and ammo. I've seen Uzi's, AR-15's, every conceiveable pistol, Lugers, etc. Old grizzled characters in overalls run the place. Lately they've come up with a lot of old surplus furniture and computer gear (Fort Campbell army post is just down the road). If you've ever wondered what a KY army surplus store should be like, this is the place.
There are quite a few surplus places in the SF Bay area, some better then others. Weirdstuff and HSC are not my favorites. Both are rather overpriced and really tend to cherrypick equipment. I'd highly recommend Mike Quinn's Electronics in San Leandro. Find stories about the creation of the IMSAI 8080 and you'll find Quinn's mentioned. Have to dig to find the treasures of course. Sharon Industries in San Jose is decent if he's open. Excess Solutions leans more towards components but really who know what you'll find. There are a couple swapmeets. The Foothill College one is the best for electronics. When I last went to the Livermore one it had a high concentration of fleamarket crap. Check out This Link for links to more surplus places in the Bay Area and also links to other surplus lists.
The more I read the post from the States, the more I salivate.
Yeah, I really miss the days I was in the States, there're sure lots of odds and ends that can be picked up in a lot of weird places.
But in Asia, there's no such place !
Or perhaps, I am just well-informed.
So, to Asians - or those who have previously lived in Asia, - is there any place in Asia - from China to Korea to the Phillipines to Singapore to Thailand to Malaysia to Japan to India, I go places, you see - that has places WELL STOCKED with weird pieces of odds and ends ?
Hope there's some place I can be happy as a clam again, in Asia.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Axman is more fun, but ABC Electronics in Minneapolis for component-level electronics, test equipment, hydraulics, and the like.
...check this out over on ebay - a supercomputer with only one careful owner by the looks of it. Now that's some fancy surplus. Let's get a bidding war started.
Basically a big flea market, there are stalls selling all kinds of old car parts, tools, mechanical equipment, old radio and stereo equipment, occasionally electronics components, even entire tubes of ICs, and on and on ... There is also lots of antiques and all kinds of non-technical rubbish there as well; whatever pulls the crowds. I have found goodies ranging from microprosessors to hydraulic motors there.
Another useful surplus outlet is the store of name Havaristen, located in Enebakk, south of the city. The name of that business literally means "one who has capsized" and they sell an everchanging lot of stuff from failed businesses, and stuff damaged in transit. They have everything there, at some time or another, but it is not limited to "geeky" items.
SIGBUS @ NO-07.308
For the Silly Con valley folks.... Across from the Sunnyvale Fry's.... Action Computers. The service is surly but the products are gone through and work, work right too. Just know that no one is as good as their tech thinks he is. Right next door is a place called Disk Drive Depot.. along with 5 or 6 other names... If you need a disk drive. Any size type flavor or speed. These guys have it... period. But my favorite is still software and stuff www.softwareand stuff.com. The prices really are surplus... the quality is high and man when it comes to electronics, tools and a bunch of other stuff. This is the place.. (Check out the gameing chairs on the website)
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
C & H Surplus in Pasadena, CA, home to JPL, Caltech, and the Rose Bowl. Now, it's not Boeing Surplus, in Tacoma, WA, but it's quite large and has a nice variety of stuff: electronics, motors, test equipments, BIG magnets, lots of optical equipments, machines, and some really random shit.
URL: http://www.candhsales.com/
With few exceptions, C & H is not the kind of store you go to if you need to find what you are looking for. You go there to browse the shelves and bins and ask, "I wonder what I could do with that?" or "What the hell is that?" Lots of test equipment, meters, optics, bits and pieces, not a lot of the latest stuff. A lot of the inventory is out of the 70's +/- two decades. It's not very big, but it is a fun place to kill and hour or so. Just a couple miles east of Caltech, on Colorado.
Damn, you Bloomington City Council, damn you to hell.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I've been going to "Freddie's" (Active Surplus for the uninitiated) since I was about 5. I'm now 28. Freddie was one of a big handful of electronics surplus stores in the late 70's/early 80's on what is now a *much* different Queen St. West strip. The earliest computer stores in Toronto were all on Queen St, from McCaul (by the City TV building) to Bathurst, about a kilometer over.
Freddie always (and still does) specialized in surplus junk, but the store used to be divided half-and-half with a double-door sized entranceway between them. One half, resistors, capacitors, all neatly sorted in cardboard bins (as they are today), and random electronic type junk. The other half, power tools, sheetmetal stuff, mechanical junk of all sorts. Nowadays it's mostly resistors, caps, discreet parts, and bizarre job lots of strange old electronic throwaways. You think it's interesting now? Try a quarter century ago!
Anyways, along with Freddie, there was Jackson, who I only knew as such (my Dad would know his full name, I was like 5-10 yrs old), who had a huge shop on McCaul St, a bit bigger than the electronics side of Freddies, but more oriented to complete bits of electronic junk, rather than discreet parts. He closed down late 80's if I recall, and I think he's somewhere in Vancouver now.
Electronics surplus wasn't the only game in Toronto in the 70's though. My Dad was one of the first people to bring in Apple ][+ clone motherboards, with an outfit called Aftek, which was on Queen more towards the Bathurst side. Nazir, the character behind Aftek, had his guys physically trace an Apple motherboard, with pencil and tracing paper, and with parts from Active Surplus, Dad and I soldered the chip sockets and resistors by hand in our basement.
I was still in the single digits at the time, and even before that, at 4 1/2, we had built a ZX81 kit which was bought from Active Electronics (not Active Surplus), about 10 doors east of Freddies.
That whole stretch of Queen was the introduction of personal computers to Toronto, and probably in a large way, to Canada. From East to West, Active Electronics, "Joe", who ran Perfect Electronics (I think it was called that... it's still there, but it's now a PC white-box and accessory shop), Active Surplus, albeit slightly changed but with the same guys behind the counter, Aftek, long gone although Nazir is still a friend of the family and still in computers, and then "Albert's", or "Supremetronics". He was at the corner of Spadina and Queen, and stuck it out for the longest time, I think he was nearly 70 when he closed up shop a few years ago.
I'm not 100% sure of the accuracy of all this... I was so young it's all blurry memories and urban legends to me now.
There's no more hand-soldering of basement-etched cloned motherboards, but that stretch of Queen St., and a bunch of guys who *loved* collecting junk (you should see my Dad's garage and basement!), and had a real passion for these "new computer things", introduced a big city to a big industry.
They were the pioneers of gadgetry in Toronto, and a big bunch of idols and friends in my childhood.
That's a really sweet weapon you've found. Those were used by the Russians/Soviets from 1891 thru the 1950's IIRC. The 7.62X54 is equivalent to an 8 mm magnum in knockdown power and range. To find one in unfired condition is extrememly rare, tho lots of beat up examples are available. When buying surplus ammo for it, if you find any with a yellow tip BUY ALL OF IT! Those are steel tip armor piercing rounds. You have absolutely no idea how fun those are to shoot at old appliances, metal trash cans, etc. Good luck with your new toy!!! BTW, is that the paratrooper model with the side folding bayonet? Those seem to be a bit more balanced than the long barrel models, although the perceived recoil is a little more extreme. Lots of info on this weapon at http://www.mosin-nagant.net/Russian-M44-Carbine.ht ml .
Have none of you been to Akihabara in Tokyo?
Better known as Electronics Town.
How many places can you walk down streets and streets of places selling everything from cabinet fans for 10 cents to 16 CPU Silicon Graphics mainframes for a few hundred dollars. If only my Tokyo apartment was big enough to store stuff. (anything bigger than a laptop and I would need to sleep outside)
for anything computer related you could dream off, from silicon graphics mainframes to CRO's.
I've found LOADS of great stuff at my local (South Carolina) state surplus warehouse. Not sure how other states work, but I've bought projectors there ridicuously cheap (they through they were broken), $5 computers all day long, office furniture, milling machines, electron microscopes, old Macs, TV studio equipment, cars, you name it, it's been sold there. They come up with some whack stuff. Once saw a dentist chair there. Wasn't sure what I could do with it but was very close to buying it.
Anybody know if anything exists..
-greg
In Australia, try oatley electronis; www.oatleyelectronics.com
Pasadena:
Marvac electronics: www.marvac.com
CandH Surplus: aaaim.com/CandH/index.htm
Van Nuys:
www.allcorp.com
All three have good paper catalogs too.
in Wichta Ks, Boeing has a cool surplus store.
everything from old drafting tables to Mills.
I just moved here from Silicon Valley. I miss WeirdStuff so much. Especially the old Weirdstuff off San Thomas in Sunnyvale. The first time I went in there I was amazed to see [in addition to all the other cool stuff] an old operators console from back when they had to manually connect the lines for phone calls. Such a cool place!.
:) ]
Another post mentioned Action across from the Sunnyvale Fry's. They nailed it when they said the service was "surly". Quite an accurate assessment!
Anyway, I'm in Fort Worth now and have been looking for something to compare. There's a place in Arlington called Electronic's Discount Warehouse [I think] that isn't too bad. Is there anywhere else? [At least there's a Fry's here. That keeps me somewhat sane
Ender
Nothing to see here
...has a great collection of old IBM mainframe components (due to its proximity to the IBM mainframe plant in Poughkeepsie) and a wild assortment of everything else. If you can't find a project by just walking down the aisle, you have no imagination.
http://www.ptsurplus.com/
People have been mentioning stores like Active surplus in Canada or other places up north, but surely there are some such stores down here in the South! Can anyone give the scoop on surplus stores in the South; particularly in Houston or Atlanta? =)
Check your local Ham radio groups or the ARRL for hamfests going on in your area, and DO NOT MISS the dayton OH hamfest in may.
If you cant find it in dayton, it doesnt exist on the planet anymore. and yes, that is true, as I did find a periscope from a submarine, a military communications trailer, field combat computer, several assorted mainfraimes.
and 2 years ago I purchased an Ailtair 8080 (with all options and hand upgraded to 64K ram )computer for $10.00 the dolt had no idea what he had!
T1 gear? OC3 gear? laser data links? lasers? microwave equipment? How about a fully operational radar dome and equipment with it to make your own weather radar station?
It's there.
I am the lone locust of the Apocalypse, think of me when you look to the night sky. -Zorak
In Dallas, the first place to go is Tanner Electronics, on Valwood Pkwy. They've likely got the odd part, power supply, etc. you need. The surplus items are highly selected and new or working. You'll always meet other engineers here discussing tech or other issues with the Tanners. Electronic Discount Sales, locations in Irving (Beltline&Walnut Hill), and Arlington. This is fairly comparable to the new Wierdstuff warehouse. Lots of old PC's and SUNS. They'll bust apart a PC to get you a 49cent simm if you need one. Lots of PC parts, new and old. Old macs for $5. The test equipment is way overpriced. I suppose the haven't checked out the competition on Ebay.
I used to live in the Bay area circa 1989, and would routinely stop at WierdStuff warehouse to get out of rush hour traffic on the way home. You really could find wierd stuff, old minicomputer parts. I picked up a "printer controller" for $20 that had a complete 68000 system in a VME backplane! Needless to say, I was very disappointed when I visited the Bay Area in 1999, and discovered that WierdStuff had moved, and transformed into a fairly boring clearing house for commodity PC/mac parts and obsolete software, with laughably optimistic pricing. I was also shocked to see Fry's selling washing machines! On the other hand, even in 1989, lots of engineers may not have bathed if Fry's didn't sell soap :-)
Yeah, I've got this mate in Texas... Apparently he's got loads of NASAs old stuff lying aroung in his back garden....
Has lots of excellent surplus junk/treasure stuff and a web store so if you don't live near one you're still in luck.
If you buy chemicals, exotic electronics, avionics, biotech equipment, centrifuges, radio controlled airplanes, HAZMAT suits, welding tanks, or even a pallet load of aluminum tubes, you are raising flags by doing something "out of the ordinary".
I would be EXTREMELY surprised if the CIA, NSA, and FBI all were NOT automatically trolling the listings and keeping list of who was bidding on unusual items. ("Carnivore" sound familiar?) Its just too easy to do these days and you don't need Ebay's help or permission to do that. Its freely available information to collect and data-mine. A central data base containing a good percentage of the uncommon/unusual purchases people have made within the US and abroad. Its very easy to build profiles of people by what they buy and sell.
These agencies would be TOTALLY STUPID not to do so in the name of "homeland security". I would not be surprised if they even plant particular items to see who's interested, afterall its perfectly legal to re-sell "government surplus"!
I think people do have a reason to worry about that. Its uncomfortable to do business if "big brother" is looking over your shoulder. So yes, you DO need to wear a "tin foil hat" figuratively speaking and be careful about how you conduct yourself and what you buy, or else you might find it necessary to explain yourself to some large men in black suits one day. It stifles creativity, ingenuity, and freedom.
Electronic Discount Sales is a great place to spent hours just browsing. My proto-geek 11 year old loves it, especially when I tell him how much some of the really old stuff cost when it was new.
In Fort Worth, the Goodwill location on Campus Drive near the Tarrant County College has a big computer store with occasional cool/weird stuff float through. Very puzzling though is how many businesses dump their old computers without scouring their harddrives.
Wierd stuff used to put a sticker on things saying "This is guarenteed not to work, if it does work you are welcome to return it for one that doesn't?"
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
It's on Natural Bridge just west of I-170. Books, manuals, parts, old computers and 'vintage' electronic games without the high prices. Just about anything electronic. I been there many times when I worked over there and never saw the same person behind the counter.
I've lived in KoP all my life and have yet to find any really cool places to buy this kind of stuff arround here, I guess surplus just isn't suburban enough...
SWAP in Madison, WI always has an interesting selection of stuff ranging from desktop PCs to copiers to surplus lab equipment (think cool stuff for your Halloween Haunted House) to office furnishings.
All of the stuff comes from the various University of Wisconsin campuses statewide. SWAP does have an online inventory but there's no substitute for taking a couple of hours to look through all of it.
Also, note that SWAP's hours are kinda goofy so don't head out until you've checked their hours of operation.
d a v e
"Hmmm...upgrades."
Check out http://www.drms.dla.mil/newsales/ for information on US Dept of Defense surplus sales. In my former life in the military, I used to go to the surplus warehouse regularly to look for electronics. You could get a pallet of ~3 year old PCs for under $100 sometimes, and if you open these babies up, sometimes you will find some nice upgrade parts in them (large, newer harddrives, memory, etc...). One time I bid on a sale lot of office equipment ( I wanted a couple of filing cabinets). I won the bid for under $150...but then I realized I needed a full sized UHaul to move all the stuff. Had to have my own surplus sale after I got all that stuff (mostly desks and cabinets) to my house.
Hi all
It sounds like many of you have great fun with the surplus stores near you. I live in Durban, South Africaand the only surplus store I know of is Sad Sack's which is army surplus. Does anyone know of electronic/computer/scientific/geek surplus places in Durban or South Africa in general?
thanks
SmilyBorg
P-)
The AxMan was great. Back when I lived in the Twin Cities, I used to volunteer at The Bakken Museum of Science and Electricity helping helps learn about science and electricity. We were always coming up with little projects for them (making their own capacitors, their own fire-by-friction kits, etc.). Of course, the first step for any real project was a trip to AxMan to pick up some random electronics tidbits, and the accompanying assortment of magnets, marbles, tubes, and whatnot. Could usually leave with two large shopping bags of "stuff" for under $5.
That, and while working on my PhD in Mechanical Engineering, I ended up buying more than a few items for the lab at AxMan.
If I can't get to weirdstuff.com, how the HELL am I supposed to buy that JATO I needed for this weekend!?
Hmmm, maybe the Russians will sell me a V2 rocket.
weirdstuff.ru here I come!
-S
P.S. Too much repetition. Too much repetition. How the hell do you call that repetitive?
We Apprentice Developers and Designers
I recently spoke with Dr. Les Kramer (the lead research scientist at Lockheed Martin in Orlando), and he said that a few years back SkyCraft saved their butts. Apparently they were asked to start producing some sort of missile or rocket part that they hadn't built in years, and they were having trouble locating one of the parts they used. Skycraft not only had the part, they had serial #001 and #002 of the part! They were thrilled to have found them there.
My last visit to Skycraft, I purchased a thin multimeter for keeping on my motorcycle. It's come in handy more than once in the past few months!
If I had to choose one thing I like most about Skycraft, it would be the cheap cables. Whereas most places charge a TON for cables, Skycraft is selling Firewire, S-Video, serial cables and many others for CHEAP! Best Buy and others must have a 1000% markup on their cables...
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
The MIT Swap Fest runs during the spring and summer in Cambridge. It's $5 to enter ($4 if you bring the flyer from the website):
http://web.mit.edu/w1mx/www/swapfest.html
It used to be primarily radio gear, but now there's a lot of computer stuff as well. Things range from brand new, to "fell off a truck". Depending on your negotiating skills, you can get a pretty good deal on used stuff. There are a *lot* of sellers there, and it's a lot of fun if you like poking around looking for stuff.
guys! There's more to fun than just electronics, real surplus stores also got military surplus. Geez I had so much fun at the old real army/navy stores used to be around. When I was a kid you'd go in one they had freeking bazookas hanging on the wall and torpedoes hanging from the ceiling and carried REAL STUFF. Oh man it was neat, I bet 3/4's of the stuff now is politically incorrect. sigh. Oh well, the better ones:
here's some larger ones with online presence:
http://www.majorsurplusnsurvival.com/
check this one out, some amazing stuff
http://www.colemans.com/
Now this isn't a surplus place, but it's pretty spiffy. Catalog that carries Xtreme low tech but functional devices, thing geek stuff for the amish, too cool, check it out
http://www.lehmans.com/
There used to be and might still exist an atlanta area electronics and stuff surplus stores called "Peachtree Salvage", they used to have several stores, I looked on google but didn't find a link that looked good, and it's been a few years since I have been to one,or atlanta for that matter, but if they still exist they had tons of odd stuff
Enough Said. Ax-Man is *the* place.
-- dieman - Scott Dier
1946 M44 Soviet rifles? They are a dime-a-dozen. Either N.I.W. (gun speak for New In Wrap) or used. Honestly. I've spotted slightly used models for $49.95 at local gun shows.
Bolt action surplus rifles tend not to be priced too high on the "desirable" lists. Of course you can see rare Mausers and such going for the occasional mega-buck but the Military bolt action rifles of the past two World Wars were manufactured in their millions. It takes a lot more than just N.I.W condition to command higher prices (unsual stampings/markings, rare modifications etc).
cheers
front
And before the World Trade Center was built, there was Courtland Street and environs. New and surplus electronics, and nearby other assorted interesting things at places like Job Lot Trading which had neat tools and hardware.
Starting at 6th Ave. and running almost until Broadway there are many kinds of surplus stores: electronics, military, plastics, metals, motors, hardware (not the computer kind) and more than one of each execpt for the military store. If youre in Manhattan and you like this kind of thing it's definitly a must see.
http://www.allelectronics.com/
Lots of discrete components, and odd stuff. Good selection, GREAT deals.
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
I am looking for some good computer surplus stores in the Washington, DC Area (I am in NVA)
They always make a good outing.
Has anyone seen a decent computer surplus in the Lexington Kentucky area ?
All Electronics in LA and Van Nuys. You can order online or through their catalog. I have been ordering from this place since the early 90's. They concentrate on surplus consumer and industrial electronics but they also have a hefty stock of electronic supplies and a decent selection of tools, fastening hardware, gears and such. Great place if you build electronic things.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
It used to be located in Tulsa, but I've heard they moved it to Dallas. This is where American Airlines not only sells its own surplus equipment, but remember, they carry cargo, too. And even shipments get lost on those big planes. Aside from a ton of electronic gizmos and airplane stuff (I still wish I picked up those airline seats), there's a little of everything else, too.
Here at Rutgers, we used to have a pretty nice surplus store... lots of great furniture for that first off-campus house/apartment, plus hundreds of P /I - P/III machines ripped from the lab. My best find - a perfectly good HP LaserJet IIIP for $20. Unfortunetly, now they've got this student running it who's a complete jerk-- aside from regularly stealing stuff for himself, he won't let you touch / test things-- he'll do it, and tell you if it works. Oh, but he's too busy to test most of the good stuff-- but no, you can't do it yourself. Oh well... time to start checking around again.
-- Is "Sig" copyrighted by www.sig.com?
Well, it isn't a store but the University of Cincinnati sells surplus, well, um, crap evey Thursday from 11:00-1:00 at the old Sears building (now the Campus Services Building), 2900 Reading Road, at the corner of Reading Road and Lincoln Avenue on Reading Road. They don't have a great selection but they definitely have weird stuff and it's cheap. They tend towards general stuff like tables & couches but I've bought oscillators ($15), the old spotlights from the student center ($75 but waaay cool!), racks ($35), and miscellaneous terminals and such ($10-15). They usually have a bunch of stuff from the labs that has been surplused (centrifuges and such) and old magnetic tape drives and the occasional VAX. Worth checking out.
MPC is great for certain things... common items, like NIC cards and PCI video cards, SCSI cables, CD-ROM drives (old mostly), the occasional "special" item (8 port 3com 10/100 switches sans power supply).
If the guys there things something is worth a bit, they'll price it high. Too high. A SCSI-2 controller for $100, an AMD K6-2 300 for $90, 4 GB IDE hard disks for $20. You can't beat the place for case cooling though - I got an 8 inch cooling fan with a standard computer power connector there. Cooooool athlon.
Anyone know any place in the twin cities that specializes in surplus Sun, SGI or other big Unix names? I keep hearing about somewhere in Mpls. that has things, but never hear a name.
Looks like they are still around.
The good places for surplus stores are areas where they build things. Mass was good, NJ was good. I live near DC now, and nobody builds anything here, just a great swirl of paper circulating around the beltway and finally (due to coriolus forces) piling up in the federal government.
Plus no heavy industry means no blue collar workers, so no great cheap restraunts.
Back to work!
-- ac at work
Pratt & Whitney in East Hartford has a decent surplus store. The Web site ai'nt much, but the shop is intersting. Prices arent' that great on old PCs ($180 for 450MHz PII w/ 64MB RAM, $75 Ultra10 w/o hard drive), but they have tons of office equipment, odd aircraft engine tools, and other sundries.
A bit off-topic, but anyone here know where I can get some acids (preferrably walking distance of King & Spadina)? I've been trying clean the electrodes on my vapouriser, and element in the kettle. CLR/Lime Away seems like a waste of money considering other things can do it cheaper. I tried white vinegar, but at just 5% acetic acid, it takes hours, even days. What I really want is closer to 20% acetic acid (I'm a bit nervous of anything stronger), but don't have the time or equipment (e.g. fractional distillation or osmosis) to get that from vinegar. Formic acid might be a good alternative too. My dad used to bring that home from the labs where he worked.
I posted this deeper in the replies, but American Science and Surplus has a free catalog and they ship nationwide -- so you don't have to live in the upper midwest to benefit from this awesome store. Their catalogs are also probably the funniest mail we get all month. They've got a great sense of humor.
Forget surplus shops...I lived in KoP for 13 months and didn't find any really cool places, period.
The really good stuff is usually located in the attic of the main office and you have to ask to see it. I grew up scouting through the place with my father as we built up a large home lab and have seen everything from defibrilators to turbopumps.
Their information: Vulcan Scrap Metal Co, 60 Taff Ave, Stamford, CT 06902, (203) 357-1720
Try some of the great places near Seattle. EPO sells expensive new stuff.
Sig:
Navy nuke sub lifestyle?
This is a long-time (since 1934) surplus house near Philadelphia. I've been buying robot parts from them since 1980 or so.
10 Kv capacitors?, have you ever seen anything remotely electronic in your life, if so, you should know that capacitance is marsured in Coulombs (not sure on the spelling) and not whatever that v is meant to represent. also the k should be small
There was related Ask Slashdot story I submitted a while back which turned up a number of great links to Hamfests, surplus stores, flea markets, etc.. (BTW, anyone who responded to that story, now 1 1/2 years ago, thanks -- got some great leads for stuff in the DC area!)
0 50255
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/08/07/0
Dunno where they get their stuff from but they've been there for 20+ years and have some very cool (and odd) stuff.
It is quite simple
Haiku should not be funny
Try a Senryu
Purdue has a similar salvage yard. Finding stuff there often involves climbing through stacks of 386s.
Wacky Willie's. Never know what you'll find there, but just reading the humorous shelf tags is worth the trip. NW Portland.
Hamfests rock.
Note: Not all hamfests are created equal. Some suck, some totally rock. The Hamvention is the hamfest to end all hamfests, held in Dayton, OH in the spring. You should be able to find 3-4 hamfests each year in your local area. (Most clubs that organize them do one once a year, although a club in the Elmira, NY area does two a year.) There's one coming up in Clinton, NJ at North Hunterdon High School this Saturday.
Note: Hamfests start early and are usually dead by 1-2 PM. Get there when they open for the good stuff.
As to online surplus: All Electronics, BG Micro, and Electronic Goldmine are all good. www.eio.com is great for LCDs.
Brick-and-mortar: Few people know this, but Edmund Scientific (of overpriced gadget catalog fame) has (or at least used to have) a brick-and-mortar store at their HQ in Barrington, NJ. In the back there was a large room almost as big as the main store that had bins and bins of surplus at great prices.
I don't know if the surplus room still exists - I haven't been down to Barrington in many years. It may well have been killed when Edmund reorganized into the Scientifics division and Edmund Industrial Optics. (They DO have an online presence in surplus optics at www.anchoroptical.com)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
In Chicago, I've found nothing that beats American Science and Surplus and you can order online now too! Not only do they have cheap surplus parts and scavenged 'junk,' but they carry a lot of new chemistry equipment and supplies, all sorts of glass lab products, telescopes, etc. It's a goofy store to describe, but when I need something, it's easy for me to figure out if they'll have the type of thing I need.
I once found a couple 12VDC fans there for like $4, then went next door to radio shack and found the SAME FANS for $12. Can't go wrong with that!
If you don't know shit, you must post it on /. You must never have seen an MN.
.30-40 (or .303 British) and has similar power, is widely available as surplus, new (cheap), and new (hunting grade). Czech ammo with 203 gr. soft point bullets is inexpensive ($6/box) and reasonably accurate. Surplus corrosive is *very* cheap, $2/box, while non-corrosive new mfg fmj in steel cases is $4 box.
.30-06 but a lot cheaper to shoot.
1) They're contemporaneous to the Krag Jorgensen (.30-40 Krag) of Spanish American War fame, and similar in the smoothness of their actions, though the stripper clip loading of the MN is far superior in combat (as were the Mausers superior to the Krag's in that war, leading to the '03 Springfield/Mauser).
2) 7.62x54 Rimmed even looks like
Much more shootable than a Mauser since all the Warsaw Pact neo-NATO countries are making cheap new ammo (as is Tusla in RU). Of all the surplus rifles out there, this makes it by far the best deal - Lee-Enfields and Mausers are a lot more expensive to enjoy.
Tons of fun, excellent muzzle blast and recoil, not as much power as a
http://www.boeing.com/assocproducts/surplus/
Most of the Dallas-Fortworth surplus places have disappeared or are dying a slow death since Fry's came to town. Some places that still remain are Half Price Computers in Richardson, Software Etcetra in Allen, Tanner's in Carrollton, and B.G. Micro. One of the best that's not what it used to be was the First Saturday sidwalk sale where Heathkit used to be.
Anyone know any cool surplus stores in New Hampshire or Vermont?
I have been going there for over thirty years and I've noted a few things that people new to the store should be aware of to make their experience a positive one:
- Go there often - at least once a month. Make sure the guys behind the counter know your face by asking not stupid questions. A "not stupid" question is "Where can I find geared motors?", not "what does a resistor do?". They don't expect their customers to know everything, but there is a certain basic level of knowledge and intelligence expected before somebody can walk in the doors.
- As part of the previous point, accept that everything there is "ASIS" unless they tell you otherwise. Asking what "ASIS" means will get an explanation geared for somebody with an IQ less than 50 that is delivered at a LOUD volume with questions afterward to make sure you understand what you have been told. Nothing pisses them off more than somebody bringing back an old cassette drive transport, demanding their money back because a pinion gear is missing inside it. They'll generally let (and help) you test stuff if it's reasonable to do and there isn't a huge lineup at the counter.
- Don't ask complex questions between 11:30 AM and 2:00 PM. A "complex" question is anything that requires an answer longer than "Aisle 2". This is their busiest time and if they're answering your questions they're not taking in money and that pisses them off.
- If you're buying something and you have people behind you, have your money/cards ready. Watching you fumble with your wallet pisses them off.
- If you are looking for something and they don't seem to have it, ask when they'll have it in. There's always a good chance that it's upstairs or they're expecting a shipment sometime in the future.
- Despite what they tell you, they're always getting in new stock. If you see something you like, but the only ones they have are incomplete or apparently damaged DON'T BUY IT! - they'll probably have more in stock in a few weeks or they'll pull more down from upstairs when the current stock is sold.
- Learn Polish, Ukrainian or Russian. At the very least it's entertaining to listen to what they think about their customers (I caught them saying that they wished a certain customer, who was no better than a misbegotten dog (literal Ukrainian translation), and all their descendents would be hit by a bright bolt of lighting. This is a mighty powerful curse.)
The simple rule is, don't piss them off.myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Los Alamos is my :)
favorite surplus store
FYI, Supremetronic is still around, but they're located three stores east of Active now.
->www.chuma.org, ranting and Newtons, what more could you want?
Computer Recyclers, 163 MacFarlane Road off Marivale. (613)723-3135
Not even in the same league as Active Surplus in Toronto, but not too shabby either. Lots of neat old corperate stuff, cheap U racks, steppers, power supplies, etc.
Osama bin Laden captured at the Ralph's Burgers in Gainesville, FL!
Go to a darkroom photo supply store. (Assuming Toronto... Just how many Torontonians and Canadians frequest /. anyhow?)
Basically east of Active to Queen/Jarvis area.
Look or ask for Kodak's liquid Stop Bath concentrate product without the indicator. It's glacial acetic acid. Dilute it down as much as you want or not.
They've moved down the street and I havn't been there since, but JOE FACTOR SALES was surplus heaven. Less than a few miles from the SkunkWorks and a short hop to JPL, they had the best assortment of stuff to build even more stuff with. Need a radar control station from the 50's era? They got 'em! No online presence, but a google search will find them.
Anyone know of any great surplus stores in the Provo to Salt Lake area. I just move dhere on Sunday and owuld love to have some of the same conviences I had in Denver.
Ward Spangenberg, CISSP Director of Network Integration and Security DynamicCity Metronet Advisors, Inc. wards@dynami
Not exactly a surplus store, but you can find great functional and non-functional aerospace related stuff at the huge "flymarket" held at the Experimental Aircraft Association's (EAA) Airventure Airshow in Oshkosh, WI during the last week of July every year (July 29th to August 4th this year).
It's also a great chance to visit the world's largest airshow (and busiest airport for one week a year) with nearly 1 million attendees and thousands of aircraft. The EAA also hosts a number of other events each year across the US that probably have smaller fleamarkets for used and surplus items.
This annual gathering of aviation "hackers" is definitely worth the drive and even better if you can fly in!
My next sig will be ready soon, but friends can beat the rush!
Textronix (off of Millikan Way in Beaverton, just west of Murray Blvd.) opens up their corporate surplus store to the public once a week on Monday afternoon, and you can walk out of there with a ton of geekery for peanuts. I grabbed a gigantic professional drafting table (vintage 1960, worth at least $3K) there for $50 once.
I didn't really understand your directions for the second place you mentioned. Close to the Knight street bridge is all I could understand. Would you be able to give any more information?
And that Main Electronics, what kind of stuff do they have?
Thanks!
Hey, thanks. I'll check that out. That's not even 10 mins on bicycle... then again, do I want to cycle home with acidic in a bag on my back? It'll be just my luck to have an accident.
/. anyhow?"
"Assuming Toronto... Just how many Torontonians and Canadians frequest
I think there's a few us. Do you remember the War Map story about the open wireless access points in the downtown core? Lots of responses seemed to come from people around here.
Surplus Shed http://www.surplusshed.com is an interesting little shop. They don't have any computer gear, but they get a lot of military surplus electronics and test bench gear. They usually have a lot of optics/optical equipment too.
I left the cities a while back, but there was a place in the Eden Praire area. It's tucked off of the N-S highway (highway 100???) on the west side between 494 and the crosstown. Unfortunately, I can't rembember the name of it. Lots of good junk in the back, scored a good deal on some rack mount stuff there.
Not nearly as fun as AxMan though.....
I don't know anything about guns or hunting, but would someone buy one of these rifles to hunt deer with?
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Having lived in Toronto all my life, Active Surplus and
Sayal are my benchmarks. The Akihabara district in
Tokyo is the hapiest place on earth... dozens of square
blocks and everything from WWII Mil surplus (!) tubes to
the lastest PC parts. Worth the trip to Japan alone.
Even though in their catalog the prices for ICs seem to be out of line with the real world prices you can find some real good deal. Last time I was there I picked up some nice VFD for 10 cents a piece.
You can buy thru catalogue from anywhere in America and the prices being in Canadian dollars make it a bargain to shop at Addison. Here is the link to their web site (it is bilingual)--> Addison Électronique
No doubt. There used to be a place in Vista Village (can't think of the name), but I haven't been there in years so I don't even know if it still exists. They had some decent stuff, though I had to explain to the clerk what an X-terminal was and what it was used for. Basic Computer Center on Orchard is not worth even going into, IMHO. Other than the Computer Renaissance at Fairview and Milwaukee (which runs hot and cold, mostly cold as of late, though), there ain't a whole helluva lot here. *Sigh*.
Meow.
Windows is the Acme of computing -- in the Wile E. Coyote sense.
If you're in St. Louis, MO go to Gateway Electronics located on Page Ave. This place has been around for a looong time and has all kinds of surplus stuff. Excellent resource.
Don't forget the Fridley store, either -- from Minneapolis, follow Central Ave. and continue on Hwy 65, turn onto E. Moore Lk. Dr, it's in the shopping center. I'm usually there once a week (it's right between my work and home), walking around like a zombie, thinking about some electronics project.
When I was growing up, this was The Place.
They're still around -- http://aaaim.com/CandH/
I live a ways away now, so I haven't been for a long time. But back when we were assembling computers by hand (S100 type stuff, and tricking out our TRS-80s), you could get great stuff there. Then in college, when I needed stepper motors, they were there for me.
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
Lots of quality parts, well organized, and reasonable prices. They once had a 7-foot-tall functional electron microscope for $2500.
You were 80% angel, 10% demon. The rest was hard to explain. - Over The Rhine
"Math in a song is good."-Linford
Even back in the day when WeirdStuff had a normal name and a warehouse off Phelan in San Jose they did carry a lot of stuff that they charged too much for and did horriffic things such as sawing the edge connectors off of otherwise perfectly good S100 boards.
Sure, they have the occasional great find, but it's often just silly, like the previously-mentioned $4k Cisco switch.
"You might as well get your son a ticket to hell as give him a five string banjo." -unknown minister
Check out http://www.drms.dla.mil/newsales/ for information on US Dept of Defense surplus sales.
;-)
I'm really glad that they have FSC 8810 - I always wanted to buy an army surplus cow!!!
Seriously, though, it is a really good site. I just wish I could save enough pennies to buy something in the FSC 1810 catagory.
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
I loved that place when I lived there. I'll love it again when I move back. Some highlights:
;)
Old WWI infantry flak helmets
Same-era gas masks -- that still worked (great for cleaning litterboxes)
Genuine Orange Balls, guaranteed to be orange.
One of my favs were the gas masks. A friend of mine made the most wicked steamroller from one
They're great if you need cheap Red Chinese tools, that's for sure.
The best buys there come from the cable bins. Just about any kind imaginable and really cheap.
I'm less than impressed with Disk Drive Despot/Dot Com Despot/Disk Drive Warehouse, CSC Inc (not affiliated with Computer Sciences Corporation), etc. If you can use IDE, you'll get better prices at Fr*'s, just across the expressway...the SCSI drives they have there are usually very out of date and don't seem to last long.
Software&Stuff [SurplusComputers, visible from US-101] has very little in the way of real surplus, but they do have fantastic prices on some new-from-China stuff like 50-pack spindles of DVD-Rs for under a buck apiece.
"You might as well get your son a ticket to hell as give him a five string banjo." -unknown minister
Gateway's store in Denver closed recently. Too bad, they had great stuff!
(1) Can't pick it up, check it out, see if it's really what you wanted
(2) Prices bid up to the level of absurdity. I mean, we're talking surplus (aka junk) not Picassos.
I would think it wouldn't be all that hard to track down the rotor blades.....
//FIXME: Bad
I remember them having an electron microscope for sale... :)
The capacitors as large as oil drums were cool...
Lots of cool "ooh, i want!" gadgets in the glass display cabinets near the entrance too.
My father is a broadcast engineer / electronic whiz and he used to take me out to Quinn's Electronics out by the Oakland Airport. That place was like a playground to me! Some fond memories are: the 40 in 1 pong game that was just a circuit board with controllers dangling from it. It was the first home video game console ever possibly. My dad hooked it up to our TV as is, just a circuit board sitting on top of the set.
We got an old teletype from quinn's too, and pops wrote the drivers for it for our TRS-80. It held us over until the price on an epson dot matrix came down. I was handing in papers on yellow teletype paper that i had to cut into pages.
When we needed extra money, Quinn had bags and bags of chips, probably 555 timers. We breadboarded a chip tester, and went through huge bags of IC's sorting out the working chips. God knows how much he paid us but it wasn't worth it.
And of course everybody loved the Bear.
music lover since 1969
Factory Surplus - Glenwood Springs, Colorado
'nuf said.
On the positive side, I really enjoyed my coworkers. One year we had a bowling team. We came in dead last, but always first drunk.
You might still find some of my signs there too, but it has been awhile.
To stay somewhat on topic, MPC in Eagan has better and cheaper surplus.
The place you are thinking of is Dexis Corporation in Eden Prairie. It's nestled inside a bunch of warehouses, so it can be tricky for some people to find, but definately worth checking out before buying a computer part at retail prices.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
H&H Surplus on Eutaw St. used to be a great place. They had all sorts of miscellaneous junk: camping gear, old military radios & electronics, you name it.
I haven't been there in ages, and I think that it may have closed down.
The original Gateway Electronics is located here in sunny St. Louis MO (hence the name) - I think some years ago they decided to branch out into San Diego and maybe Denver?? Anyway, the St. Louis store is still pretty cool.
http://www.activesurplus.com/
I have a listing of ~25 local surplus stores with address, details of location and content.
I was blocked by the lameness filter for too much white space when I tried to copy and past it.
Too bad I won't take the time to reformat it.
Thanks, Felix.
I'll check it out the next time I'm in town.
Frad
This is a sample sig. Press F1 to personalize.
"No soup for you!"
Sorry, obligitory.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Woah, neat! That store is just down the road from my school down here in Orlando. I have been there several times and you just walk in and see circuit boards and electrical components everywhere. Things are very cheap and they have pretty much anything. If you really want something from them, I think you can buy stuff through their website. Good luck fellow techies!
Not even close to a nuclear strike... http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/03/13/world/ma in543901.shtml
I went there for the first time a few weeks ago to pick up some old Apple Disk ][ drives. They have those in abundance but I certainly didn't expect to find an old Tandy Modem I (300 baud external, direct connect, plug in your phone and dial manually and then flip the carrier switch by hand when the remote modem answers). This was my very first modem back in 1983 and I'd been thinking for a while how cool it would be to pick one up. Never thought I'd see one again but there it was. $3!
:-)
(They also had several examples each of my third and fourth modems -- a stylish little tower-style ViVa! 2400 and a 9600 baud Practical Peripherals external -- so I may be going back again. The venerable Novation Apple-Cat 212 is still in its original box in a trunk at my apartment.
During my high school years (late 80s early 90s) I carried bottles of the stuff from there to home in north Scarborough back down to school at Vic Park/Kingston. They came in little 250ml or 500ml bottles and made something like 10-20 litres of stop bath.
I poured it straight into a 15 year old stainless steel kettle full of mineral build up. It sizzled, bubbled, foamed and pretty quickly bits of mineral had detached themselves. It took an hour plus replacing the acid 2 or 3 times when the bubbling slowed down significantly before it worked.
I've touched the stuff with my bare hands and it dried out and crystalized long before it started irritating.
Actually, it was a good hour or so afterwards I'd noticed a slight itch where the stuff crystalized.
I chatted with the chemistry teacher (my darkroom teacher) and he guessed that with the exception of the indicator, the stuff ought to have been quite pure. We brought it down to 5% concentration. None of us were brave enough to try it but it sure did smell like plain old white vinegar.
I kinda recall that war map story but I didn't read it in any great detail.
Fair Radio Sales in Lima, Ohio has been dishing the surplus goodies like hand-crank military surplus field telephones, vacuum tubes and, yes, 10 kV capacitors for decades. A real treasure trove.
Anyone know of a good surplus store in the St. Louis area?
Open:
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
There's also Astro Too in Melbourne, FL.
http://www.astrotoo.com
I wouldn't characterize them as being like the Seinfeld "Soup Nazi", it would be more accurate to say they aren't very patient with stupidity.
Personally, I think if you showed up at 12:15 PM, when there are a couple of dozen people at the single front counter and held up an ancient "Princess Phone" asking if they have the rotary dial version in purple and then ask how long the warranty they give on it is, then you deserve to be called a throwback (or worse) in a slavic language.
Common sense would indicate that the example above would be a dumb thing to do, but I can't tell you how many times I have seen people do things just like the phone example (and at other stores to be fair) - at Active Surplus you just don't get responses to these kind of questions with the kind, patient, medicated voice you would expect from The Gap.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
The bowling team must have been great - did you know Anthony and Fred C?
They got everything. No kidding. A bonus for all of you who read these comments: They sell a simple 486 class black anodized aluminum heatsink that they ID as being made by, none other than "EG&G Industries". Am I mistaken or is that the same company that operates "Area 51"? I saw that description and had to go get one.. .
If you happen to live in the greater Montreal area, there is but one mecca to turn to:
:(
http://www.addison-electronique.com/
These guys are are the most awesome suppliers of anything electronic in montreal.
I try to go there once a year just to check out the "new" or fairly new stuff.
GO SEE. Worth the trip.
Mike
P.S Sorry if this message is doubled but my ISP cut off in mid-post
There are plenty of such guns in the museums already. "You Can't Touch This!" collectors'll just have to take their steenking chances. They've already screwed up the vintage guitar and amp market, and parts of the gun market, too.
Enjoy that rifle. Punch some holes in something for me, too. If any of these morons come by to harass you, punch a hole in their tire for me!
8^)
Check out the GSA Auctions site. Lots of surplus Government property. It varies from literal junk, a la "Sandford and Sons," to valuable presidential gifts inluding jewelry and art. A few years ago, the Coast Guard cutter featured in the "Perfect Storm" was sold on GSAAuctions
-no signature is good enough
Ooh! I want a vaporizer! I can use it on slashdot trolls, or that annoying dude at the grocery store...
Oh wait, are you referring to one of those dumb things that makes steam to humidify a room? Never mind then.
Ron Paul 2012
SurplusGizmos.com has quite a bit of interesting stuff. They are located in hillsboro (portland) oregon area. :)
Lots of industrial equipment, parts, some Fab robots, speakers, etc.
Odds and ends abound..
http://www.stores.ebay.com/netgodshouseofhack
http://unixsurplus.com
There's a giant warehouse in Sunnyvale, CA full of ANYTHING you need from workstations and parts up to Sun and SGI enterprise stuff. Even a bargain basement Cray. For the non-mainstream stuff like Sun and SGI, it's all usually way cheaper than some retail place like Weird Stuff, although they're pretty good too.
Tell em you saw this on Slashdot. I'm sure they'll get a kick out of it.
American Science and Surplus is a blast!
Another fun place in Chicago that fewer people know about is "Usable Materials" at 1434 N. Western Ave. Not so much electronic surplus, but lots of weird scrap metal, motors, wire, springs, old saw blades, greasy parts from unidentifiable mechanical devices, etc.
I don't know anything about guns or hunting, but would someone buy one of these rifles to hunt deer with?
From what I understand... yes. The round is close to that of a 30-06, which provides plenty of knock-down power against a deer. The 7.62x54mm that the M44 shoots provides enough knock down power to take a deer down nicely. Combine that with them averaging (from what I read) around 1 MOA (Minute of Accuracy) which means from a steady rest rounds at 100 yards will all land within an inch of eachother and you've got a nice accurate and powerful hunting rifle that's fairly cheap to obtain and has some "neat" factor to it, as it's not your typical run-of-the-mill hunting rifle.
Oh, and the fact that it's got a 16" bayonette on it is fun too.
As one brilliant slashdot sig points out, 'bush' is another way of saying 'cunt'.
And I don't think that he need worry that his interest might not be geeky enough. We geeks tinkered with guns, bicycles, ham radios and anything else with parts inside (preferably well made!) before computers that we could afford came along. Enjoy!
Think, write, think, edit, think...then post.
Think, write, think, edit, think...then post.
http://www.angelfire.com/biz/troopsupport/index.ht ml
106mm Heat rounds (1000 min order)
mig -29s, tanks, field hospitals, everything needed for your soon to be liberated republic.
My brother deals with a lot of surplus equipment so he gets fun/cheap/old things. He mostly has phone equipment listed on the site now.
PCLiquidations.com
Escape Pod Films: Sketch Comedy and Web Series
You had to drive over to NJ and hit Edmunds Scientific before they were bought out and closed down.
Coolest place, had an operational periscope from a sub in the entry area.
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.
There's an "Active Electronics" on Victoria Park where Sayal and Daiwa Semitron (by Gordon Baker) are. Same outfit? Dunno. :)
:) ) people. Was that the case back in your day?
As mentioned in another post, Supremetronics is still around. Run and operated by Cantonese-speaking (Southern Chinese, basically - I'm one of them
Places which sell actual computers have since moved up to College St. I wonder when that happened.
- Ed.
When I was last in Montreal, my uncle brought me to King George Electronique in Longueuil. We spent hours looking at random crap. They had everything from 286 motherboards to ancient cell phones. 10,000sqft of pure bliss!
Anyone know of a place like this in or around Ottawa?