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Silicon Valley's Island of Misfit Tech
harrymcc writes "For more than 20 years, Sunnyvale's cavernous, aptly-named Weird Stuff Warehouse has sold an amazing array of salvage and surplus computer products. It's like a tech museum where everything's for sale at bargain-basement prices — from shrinkwrapped Atari 1040ST software to used BetaMAX tapes to 1GB hard drives to mysterious printed circuit boards to Selectric typewriters. I paid a visit to this legendary geek temple and snapped photos of some of the fascinating stuff I came across."
Round circuit board is a needle Probe card. (For testing IC's) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probe_card
Porn?
Porn - back in the day before cow udder sized fake tits and shaved vaginas - back when the women looked like women and not like tweens with two malignant tumors on their chests.
Oh great, slides of the family vacation. Fine. I'm going to the kitchen.. I'll be back glassy eyed and with a bowl of popcorn in a few!
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
Used to be across the road from the first Fry's Electronics.
It's hard to tell from the photograph, but I think the circular circuit board is a probe ring for an automated integrated circuit tester. The chip is placed in the hole in the center of the circuit board. Probe pins, like these, are placed on the gold area around the hole in the center to contact the pads of the IC under test. The other side of the pins are connected to the inner ring of contact points on the circuit board (just outside the gold area), which are, in turn, connected to the rows of contact points at the periphery of the board. These points are big enough for human beings to connect test equipment cables to.
It's an example of the transition needed from the micro- (or even nano-) world of integrated circuits to the human-scale physical world.
Reminds me of the Goodwill computer store, but bigger.
Wonder if Slashdot would run a story on me checking out a flea market?
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
My desk is an island of misfit tech :)
Some things are still work perfectly: I'm not trading my four (!) LaserJets 4M+ (and 4+ modded to 4M+ and mem-maxed) for any of today's cheapo crap (ok, ok, in the article it's a LaserJet IIP but still).
These were semi-professional printers and they're outlasting any non-professional printer that you can buy today. There's a reason why a good, low page count, 4M+ still goes on for $100 on eBay. These are indestructible devices of an age where quality in the U.S. was the norm.
Still use on of them daily and I regularly "round robbin" them :)
My desk at home is : LaserJet 4M+ and IBM Model M hooked to a Core 2 Duo + 24" Samsung screen. Pretty cool to have a 16 years old printer and a 21 years old keyboard (times four, just in case) that still work perfectly and that are still used on a daily basis.
Quality I tell ya.
RePC. There's one in Seattle south of the stadiums, plus it has a computer history museum inside of it with lots of seriously old machines on display. There is another RePC (sans museum) in Tukwila, south of Seattle.
Never seen traffic walk signs there before, but I've seen basically everything else shown here on sale at RePC, though the prices seem better than at RePC.
I picked up a C64C with some floppy drives, some monitors to go with old 8-bit machines, an Apple //GS, and some other stuff. Those machines are seriously cheap nowadays.
Sounds like a place I could donate my AOL 1.0 diskette and vintage 2400 baud modem to.
Whale
90% of it is at least partially compatible with modern hardware. I was expecting something legitimately odd.
The Dallas/Fort Worth area has at least two such places:
Goodwill Computer Works in Fort Worth and a commercial used-Electronics store in Arlington. They are also home to the First and Third Saturday sidewalk sales under the bridge in Dallas's West End area.
Goodwill also operates Computer Works and ComputerWorks stores in other cities including Austin, Houston, and elsewhere in and out of Texas, including California.
Some of these stores have museums associated with them.
Between the racks I got from Weird Stuff, the tube radio I got at Electronics Flea Market, the wiring and connectors, and components I get from Halted and Al Lasher's Electronics, (I still miss Quinn's Electronics, though...), I almost don't need to go to Fry's or order from Digi-Key.
Not that I don't go to Fry's, Digi-Key, or even eBay, but it's nice to still be able to get parts 'n' stuff on a Saturday for $5 in gas and a pleasant drive, rather than a $5 shipping charge and a three-day wait. (I don't mind paying $5 for a $1 connector, but if I gotta go that route, I'll be damned if I'm gonna wait for it :)
Alas, the surplus store memorial list gets longer with every passing year.
But that covers a few places I know of in the Bay Area. Where are your surplus stores?
did not take long to slashdot that site...
These are not hi-res pics, they're from your iPhone. What's wrong with putting everything on ONE page? Geez.
Damn you slashdot! ;)
A long time ago in a galaxy far away there was a store called "Dexis" in Eden Prairie MN. They had a retail storefront but the fun was in the back rooms. All sorts of odd stuff was for sale back there; much of it sold "best offer / as-is". I found many things back there that I didn't know (before going in) that I needed. Unfortunately for the consumer they found that they could sell that stuff for more money on ebay. Then they eventually folded up completely. Now dexis.com is a dental x-ray business. RIP Dexis.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
They should rename this place to Boring Stuff Bonanza.
I can, to some degree, understand people being a little nostalgic for the old days of computer tech. I'm not all that nostalgic about it myself, but if I ever did decide to get nostalgic about it, those are not the items I would pick. Windows 3.1 and Windows 95??? Good riddance to those crappy operating systems! A broken down P-133 with 16MB RAM??? A Betamax tape? WTF?
If you're going to be nostalgic about old computing stuff, at least pick stuff that was actually cool at the time. Like maybe a Commodore 64 or even an Apple IIe. Or maybe an old copy of Zork. Heck, even things like the Mac Plus, or Turbo Pascal would be more interesting than a shrink-wrapped copy of Windows 3.1.
Yes, I'm sure they've got all those things and more at Weird Stuff Warehouse, but TFA sure picked the wrong items to be nostalgic about.
I still have my Dell P-133 machine at home but I upgraded it to a whopping 64 mb ram a long time ago. It does a good job of running the various V for Victory games and storing long ago porn which can no longer be found anywhere (how is that possible?).
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
When I was in Silicon Valley last year of course I had to stop by this place to check it out. Well I knew it was a good sign when there was just a box of free stuff outside (mostly broken crap and old software). Inside there's the show room area but then there's just the whole back full of isles of stuff that most geeks have in their basement (err bedroom).
One of the nice things was they had an area you could take stuff to test if it worked before buying it. For a lot of the stuff that would be important to do as I don't think they're in the business of doing returns.
what we have become
just look what we have done
all that we destroyed
you must build again
Those were the days... <sigh> ;-)
Your mission, if you dare to accept it, is to solder a C64 back to life tonight.
I learned 68000 assembler on a Atari 1040 later I remember having a C programming environment in a 400K ramdisk (sozobon?).
It ended up being used as a serial terminal on 386/486 unix systems when I started programming professionally.
This article may be the first time I've thought of it in a decade.
Ah, to be young and enthusiastic again.
Nostalgia by Veidt.
This program was made possible by a grant from the Ultra-Humanite, and viewers like you.
I have most of the same stuff in my garage. If you like this stuff go to the computer swap meet in Tustin at Edinger and Grand. It's where the geeks sell have to their stuff when they get married.
There's a quite acceptable substitute in Hillsboro:
Surplus Gizmos, located on Cornelius Pass road, about a half mile north of Route 26. West side of the road, in an office park.
Hal-Ted (now HSC) has been around for a lot longer.
http://www.halted.com/
I seem to remember another electronic junque shop called Hal-Tec (or Tech?). Maybe my misty memories are too foggy.
lawn, off, etc.
My other sig is a Porsche!
Just as an FYI, I've been hearing the phrase, "why am I such a misfit, i am not just a nit wit, just because my nose glows, why don't I fit in?"
Grrrrr!
(Cool picture by the way!)
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
In other words, the Duke Nukem Forever of Steampunk. ;-)
Not coming to a Weird Stuff Warehouse near you anytime soon.
It's little sibling (not a general purpose computer) is actually working since they did build it to 19th-century specifications: http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects/computing_and_data_processing/1992-556.aspx
When WeirdStuff had satellite solar panels (when they were still at Syncamore Drive in Milpitas) ... or 4 platter 8 inch 20MB Hard Disk with spindle motor running off AC ...
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
*groan* Another 20+ page clickfest... anyone got a single-page mirror?
If you are already on vacation in Orlando, convince your family to go to Skycraft Parts & Surplus.
http://skycraftsurplus.com/
They are off of I-4 and Fairbanks near downtown, you can't miss the giant UFO on the roof.
They get a lot of old NASA/Lockheed gear, plus everything from de-soldered 74-series DIPs to Oscilloscopes to Electric Motors.
I used to love going into Weirdstuff in the mid-late 90's. I had just moved to Silicon Valley and was in awe of the incredible stuff they had. This was back when they had a location further down in Sunnyvale, right across the street from the old Sunnyvale Fry's location. At the time I worked for NCA down the block. They were a small competitor to Fry's. I think it was on Lawrence Expressway.
Anyway, I remember going in there and they had an old phone company switch board from back in the days when the operators physically connected the two phone lines by hand. It was awesome!
I'm in the DFW area now, and the closest thing I've found is Electronic Discount Sales in Arlington, TX. It's fairly cool but not nearly as awesome as Weirdstuff. And they over-price too much of their used parts.
Nothing to see here
Luke: "Are you all right? What's wrong?"
Obi-Wan: "I felt a great disturbance in the Force... as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror..."
For more bad memories, (for older readers like me), there's a photo of a boxed set Win95 'upgrade'.
They could obviously sell all this stuff on ebay (or the like) with thousands of potential buyers who would never swing by this warehouse and pick something up. And probably at higher prices, at least on average. How come they aren't? Does anyone know if there's someone behind this store funding it? Or are they actually making good money with this store?
I still have my Palm Pilot III along with its 56k modem add-on. Man, what a fucking waste that modem was. The amount of time I was actually out of my house and could use someone's phone socket to plugin and surf the net could be counted on one hand. I knew tis at the time but I had to buy the modem add-on and I felt almost like a god being able to surf the net on my Palm in my own home on my dial up modem. It's sad looking back on it now but damn that was awesome at the time.
I'm sad that my recent trip to Silicon Valley did not include a trip to this place, although I know I could not have carried much back with me. There's always a next time. Anyways, anyone know of any places like this in the Washington, DC - Baltimore MD areas?
I miss Action Surplus. They had computer and A/V cables at non-ripoff prices. Anyone know if they just moved or are they truly gone?
I also bought a cheap luggage set from there that has survived 10 years of traveling and I am still using today.
Also, remember Fry's had three locations in Sunnyvale. The first was on the east side of Lawrence, then the building painted to look like a microchip, then the current giant building which was an old manufacturing facility (can't remember which company.)
In the beginning, Frys had more of an even mix of electronics components and computer systems. I remember seeing an Amiga there for the first time and being blown away. Through the years I owned just about every model of Amiga ever made after upgrading from the C64 and 128.
comedic funny man.
The real cool stuff is in warehouse 13 as well as the arc......... but the stargate is not there that is in ch,,,,,,,,rresggrs
These are not hi-res pics, they're from your iPhone. What's wrong with putting everything on ONE page? Geez.
Because, even with the overhead of the HTML, it isn't worth the server and bandwidth hit to send 22 pictures to people who might not care after the first 2 or 3, especially if the site is getting Slashdotted.
Of everything in the photos, I'm tempted by the early word. It will do the basics and it's hard to bloat an app that comes on a few floppies...
Been shopping here for years. Many times using the gear for a few years and then donating it back. Picked up a decent SUN when the dot.com era was kicking in. Got quite a bit of old Apple II parts at one time. Even came across a shrink wrap copy of VisiCalc one day. Great place for nostalgia.
Damn, I must be old! I remember when ALL of that stuff (including the typewriter) was brand new! I KNOW I have a box of two of DOS and Win 3.1 software on 5 inch disks down there some where, and lurking in the corner is a single board computer with an RCA CDP1802 processor. Oh, did I forget to mention the boxes of Byte magazines. Not quite back to Vol 1 No.1, but close and for many years thereafter. Too bad this place is all the way across the country, maybe I could find more stuff or maybe they would want some of what I have got!
It's about the feelings of freedom we had back then. The control over what was ours. The nostalgia like an old photo of what tech meant to our lives as well as the time periods in general. The WOW! of novelty. Pleasant memories seen through rose colored glasses for some.
...the turquoise Selectric.
cat
It was in where the Grainger is now. Fry's was where Sports Basement is. But Weird Stuff was on that side of the road before Fry's, I think. Fry's used to be one street east, on Lakeside Drive. Maybe you can still see the "Fry's parking only" stencil on the parking spots just on the other side of the row of trees forming the east side of the parking lot St. John's is in.
What was the name of the computer/electronics store that moved in after Weird Stuff? It was an import from another country. They sure jumped into a battle, with NCA and Fry's already running huge component sales, they were eaten alive quickly.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I get hundreds of emails a day offering to upgrade my Wang
http://technologizer.com/2010/02/10/silicon-valleys-island-of-misfit-tech/13/
'Nuff said.
I learned 68000 assembler on a Atari 1040 later I remember having a C programming environment in a 400K ramdisk (sozobon?).
Atari ST sucks! Amiga Forever!
(just getting into the spirit of things... :)
Back in the late 80s, we had a Big Lots come into town with their assorted piles of junk. Though, they did occasionally have some interesting stuff... like bins full of shrink-wrapped atari game carts for the 2600/5200/7800. (I probably had over 200 titles stockpiled at one point... and only one was that crappy ET game.)
Then during the early 90's, neighbor of mine asked me to come help them out with a computer problem on a machine they had just bought. When I got their, it turned out the problem was that they bought some ancient government clunker that took 8.5" floppies! If you can imagine it... picture trying to slide a floppy the size of an entire file folder into a drive barely big enough to hold it without bending the thing. It's nearly impossible!
8==8 Bones 8==8
I have over half the stuff in that article. And more goodness besides. I really need to get a big skip out front and just pitch it all.
I love weird stuff. A visit there always brings back so many memories. It's nice to live so close to it. The guys who work there are awesome also.
One time my friend went in there looking for some odd ball proprietary power supply for a HP pavilion. The guys from the back emerged with the exact powersupply within 5 minutes, and had tested it for us even.
At least you can still plug one in and do something productive with it (assuming you can find a ribbon). Can't say that about much else he found there.
just outside of Kenmore Square in Boston. They had an unbelievable assortment of used equipment (in 1977 I saw a prototype Shell gas pump with a credit card reader in it). The owner, Sonny Monosson, used to walk around outside computer conventions wearing a sandwich board pitching used IBM 360s.
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
Several years ago I acquired a Laserjet 4si for $0. Bought a legal paper tray on Ebay for ~$20. My dad printed loan documents on the thing (roughly 200-400 pages a day, 5 days a week) for many months. it sat alongside a far newer LJ1200 that couldn't handle document sets over 50 pages, whereas the 4si could blow through an entire ream's worth and the output bin might be full...
Page count when we got is was around 1.6 MILLION. Ended up giving it to a friend of mine (who ran the shop the printer was salvaged from) when a customer of his needed a replacement printer (it was their's back in the day to begin with) 1.9 million pages and still going...
Damn thing made the lights dim when it spun up.
I used a 1988 IBM model M keyboard at work for nearly two years. The thing is responsible for me getting a solo office (no one could STAND being in the same office as me due to my typing speed and the noise). Ironically, I had to give it up... When I moved I had to swap my desktop_synergy'ed laptop for a laptop with no ps/2 ports and me minus an adaptor.
Found the adaptor a few weeks ago, haven't bothered... yet.
A friend of mine took his Model M to a LAN party and participated in a "keyboard toss" event (toss your keyboard at a target on the floor and you might win said target's contents ( a Z-board, iirc). 50 guys tossed their boards, 48 had to get replacements. 1 won the new board, my friend just snapped the keys back into place (and duct taped the shattered space bar together) and went right back to fragging.
It was only last year that I finally dumped some 1GB disks after copying off all the files. Four full height beasts that consumed something like 40W apiece. (They hadn't been used for about 10 years and were just taking up space and really just too expensive to run.) Other oddities I haven't been able to part with yet: a 200MB SCSI drive that I ran in a '486 back about '91 and an 80MB SCSI drive that someone gave me. I have it in a test system with an older release of SuSE on it. I'm still running some 2GB disks in our firewall; they're close to 20 years old and darned near indestructable (compared to the 500GB SATA drive that died in a matter of weeks). Then there's the 360KB and 1.2MB floppy drives and the ALR 386 motherboard that I keep on hand if I ever have the urge to throw something together to play some old Infocom games on. And who doesn't have some old UNIBUS core memory boards or some Q-BUS wirewrap prototyping boards laying around. And, of course, a bunch of Model M keyboards. (This one's pushing 18 years of use and the way these things hold up, I'm set for life for keyboards.)
Weird? Hell, it's all still useful stuff in the right hands.
A few comments about the photos in the article: First, the captions cracked me up. If the author thought the IBM Selectric was old, he ought to see the old manual Underwood we have in the basement. Does anyone remember when Wang sold mostly-DOS-compatible PCs? (Yep, they really did. I worked with a woman who brought hers into the office to use. We were mostly using CPTs back then. Only a few of us "early adopters" hauled their PCs into work.) The PC Mag article on plotters reminded me that I ran across an old carton had a small collection of HP 7470/7475 plotter pens rolling around in the bottom. God only knows why I hung onto those. (For some reason I didn't throw them away after discovering them. The Pack Rat's Curse.)
If I'm ever in the area, I've got to check this place out. I'd better leave my credit cards with the missus, though. Otherwise it could turn out to be an expensive day.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I bought two old mobos with CPUs for $20/ea and a few five port switches they had piled up in a box there for $9.99 each. Unfortunately the two mobos failed pretty quickly (one lasted about a year, the other one is juts flaky from day one). But the switches are still going strong. :P
Unfortunately I couldn't find any Atari stuff
"Netscape Navigator" we hardly knew yea
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
Next to Action computer. They were both in the buildings south of St. John's and north of 24 Hour Fitness. Now Action moved into the same complex as St. John's I think.
Thanks to the other poster for the T-Zone thing, that sounds right, I just don't feel like posting twice.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95