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The Death of Electronic Surplus (hackaday.com)
szczys writes: For hardware developers, electronic surplus stores feel like being a kid in a candy shop. It's hard to walk down an aisle packed floor to ceiling with bins of seemingly-random components without feeling giddy. The wind down of domestic manufacturing, paired with the rise of online parts retailers (think eBay) has led to the shuttering of most electronic surplus shops. But a few of the best are still around. Brandon Dunson takes us on a nostalgic trip through surplus history and a tour of his local electronic surplus store. He brings it home with the saddest part of the trend: the loss of surplus means a loss of culture. Electronic flea markets and surplus stores are a nexus point of talented and interesting people. As they go, so does the opportunity to interact in person with the gurus of electronic development.
So that's what I was wondering... this part:
Electronic flea markets and surplus stores are a nexus point of talented and interesting people. As they go, so does the opportunity to interact in person with the gurus of electronic development.
...seems to be a role now filled by maker spaces. When I went to the local mini maker faire earlier this year, there were plenty of talented and interesting people doing fun projects with electronics.
Radio Shack used to sell these mystery boxes for $9.99 back in the early 1980's. My friend and I bought about three or four boxes each. Each one had brand new electronic components like resistors, capacitors, diodes, ICs, LEDs, gears and motors. Completely random, mostly useless stuff.
When I was a video game tester (1998-2004), I used to regale the fresh out of high school younglings by informing them that video games existed long before they were born. I would introduced them to a tester who tested and fixed arcade machines back in the 1980's. Another tester who tested pen-and-paper and board games in the 1970's, many of which became inspirations for computer games. And my modest contributions to history was playing Pong when it first came out in the mid-1970's and the primitive consoles in the late 1970's and early 1980's.
Surplus has changed, but it still exists in manufacturing areas. But it's not the type of surplus store you used to see. The HuaQiangBei area in Shenzen is the new surplus store. It's primarily rolls of SM tech that is suitable for Pick and Place equipment. Because that's where the manufacturing is at. The surplus around Shenzen is actually really cool.
With miniaturization, and on-demand prototyping, the need for companies to have surplus enthusiast level stuff is way down. You do electronic layout, send it to a low volume prototyping company and they will then send it back to you in a few days/weeks. Even those prototyping stores will only surplus unusual items, with standard items being shared across different customers.
The prototyping with with non-SMT is getting kind of rare. Hell, I have seen anyone even consider Wirewrap. These days a lot of prototyping is built around microcontroller and sample boards for ASICs. And the glue between the logic boards are a few resistors or capacitors.