Weirdstuff Warehouse is closed(weirdstuff.com)
weirdstuff.com
Weirdstuff Warehouse is closed
http://weirdstuff.com/
168 comments
The bay area is a place of transformation - grassland became orchards, became early silicon valley, became the micro-computer revolution - and so on - one of the few constants in California is change.
The Orchard shopping center at Bollinger and Blaney is, unsurprisingly, located on former orchard land. I played there as a kid. I remember when the first surveyor stakes went in.
> one of the few constants in California is change
Unless it is property taxes.
Unless it is property taxes.
Right - with Prop 13, property taxes never change, sadly.
Direct democracy was a bad idea.
For whom? A representative democracy could raise (or low) taxes 20x as easily. A non-democratic state, even more easily.
For basically everyone? Direct democracy pretends that you just have this whole bunch of unrelated decisions, and so it lets you vote "Yes, everybody should get $10" and "No, nobody should pay for that extra $10" and then be _outraged_ that the result is economically incoherent even though that's _your_ incoherent policy at work.
It's a footgun. Methods of government vary in how many wise people you need for good decisions. For example an autocracy can work well with just one wise person, so long as they're the autocrat. Under Direct Democracy, more than half of all people need to _agree_ on a decision so you're going to need fully half your people to be wise or the outcomes will be awful. Good luck with that.
It's a footgun. Methods of government vary in how many wise people you need for good decisions. For example an autocracy can work well with just one wise person, so long as they're the autocrat. Under Direct Democracy, more than half of all people need to _agree_ on a decision so you're going to need fully half your people to be wise or the outcomes will be awful. Good luck with that.
> Direct democracy pretends that you just have this whole bunch of unrelated decisions, and so it lets you vote "Yes, everybody should get $10" and "No, nobody should pay for that extra $10" and then be _outraged_ that the result is economically incoherent even though that's _your_ incoherent policy at work.
Representative democracy does that too, as is evident from watching. Congress.
And non-democratic systems tend to end up with the ruling class deciding “We should get $x, And everybody else should be taxed to pay for it”, which while more fiscally coherent, isn't actually better from the perspective of anyone outside the ruling class.
> For example an autocracy can work well with just one wise person, so long as they're the autocrat.
And as long as they are not only wise, but unusually deficient in drive to serve their own self-interest. Unfortunately, it turns out that it's fairly hard to find people with the latter quality a d assure they become the autocrat; democracies, rather than relying on electors avoiding serving their self interest, rely on them actively striving to, which turns out is much more common.
Representative democracy does that too, as is evident from watching. Congress.
And non-democratic systems tend to end up with the ruling class deciding “We should get $x, And everybody else should be taxed to pay for it”, which while more fiscally coherent, isn't actually better from the perspective of anyone outside the ruling class.
> For example an autocracy can work well with just one wise person, so long as they're the autocrat.
And as long as they are not only wise, but unusually deficient in drive to serve their own self-interest. Unfortunately, it turns out that it's fairly hard to find people with the latter quality a d assure they become the autocrat; democracies, rather than relying on electors avoiding serving their self interest, rely on them actively striving to, which turns out is much more common.
>It's a footgun. Methods of government vary in how many wise people you need for good decisions. For example an autocracy can work well with just one wise person, so long as they're the autocrat
I guess you can see how this is more of a foot canon...
I guess you can see how this is more of a foot canon...
And let's not forget property prices.
I thought everyone is upset because property prices were changing...
Property prices were affordable a 10-15 years ago. Otherwise how would we have all these middle-class families living here?
I'm not so sure about this one. I remember visiting the Bay in 2003 and housing prices took my breath away. Now, of course, it's stupefying.
I think salaries have increased dramatically since that time frame, creating the perception of relative affordability for previous years. I think the % of home price increase has been fairly constant (except for the market crash).
Who knows what may happen in 10 more years! Home prices may still yet double, but then entry level SE positions may be going for 400-500k!
I think salaries have increased dramatically since that time frame, creating the perception of relative affordability for previous years. I think the % of home price increase has been fairly constant (except for the market crash).
Who knows what may happen in 10 more years! Home prices may still yet double, but then entry level SE positions may be going for 400-500k!
Everything is relative. One of the reasons I turned down a couple of job offers in Silicon Valley in the 1990s was because the cost of living was relatively high compared to the Northeast.
The housing bubble through the bubble bursting isn’t exactly the best example of affordability.
I agree, but my point was that there was significant period of time when folks could and did buy houses here.
Now if the parent poster had said housing stock has remained (generally) constant, I'd be in agreement on that.
Now if the parent poster had said housing stock has remained (generally) constant, I'd be in agreement on that.
Direct correlation.
And death! Meme barf buddies!
I used to see a guy harvesting wheat next to Intel's fab, or walk through the bean fields where Google HQ (before Google, SGI's and Alza's respective HQs). Oh yeah, and I remember when all the houses in Palo Alto were underwater (prices had fallen so low the houses were worth less thant their mortgages).
Times change.
Times change.
I remember the first time I went into Fry's. You could get chips and chips (CPU and potato).
There's a semiconductor manufacturer called Potato actually...
http://www.potatosemi.com/
They have some rather interesting parts, too.
They have some rather interesting parts, too.
It's not an elaborate joke either, in case anyone is wondering:
https://hackaday.com/2017/04/30/afroman-makes-a-uhf-oscillat...
https://hackaday.com/2017/04/30/afroman-makes-a-uhf-oscillat...
Fry's is selling mattresses and perfume these days. Its a bit sad.
For actual electronics it's pretty much Shenzhen or gtfo these days.
Why can these amazing things exist in Shenzhen but not here?
The tea maker culture, tinkering with electronics, working on meaningful challenges - hardware, medical, non-apps has mostly left Silicon Valley compared to how it was.
Instead two of the most dominant companies fund themselves with ad revenue or selling private information.
Apple does hardware, but it’s a closed box.
Instead two of the most dominant companies fund themselves with ad revenue or selling private information.
Apple does hardware, but it’s a closed box.
Electronics (physical things) require prototyping shops, which require physical space. Unfortunately land is at a premium in the Bay Area.
As rents rise beyond oppressive rates, I worry the Bay Area won't be as innovative anymore because startups (software and hardware) won't be able to afford taking risks.
As rents rise beyond oppressive rates, I worry the Bay Area won't be as innovative anymore because startups (software and hardware) won't be able to afford taking risks.
>Electronics (physical things) require prototyping shops, which require physical space.
This is true. Look at any of the 70's and 80's computer magazines on archive.org, and you'll see only about 20% of the ads are from companies in SV. All the others are scattered in cities big and small from coast to coast.
It's amazing to think that small towns in Illinois and rural Virginia used to have big players in the hardware industry.
Now, with the exception of the increasingly rare spark from Apple, it's not about building innovative and interesting physical things anymore. It's about taking other people's money and shuffling it around trying to make more of it through half-baked startup ideas. Silicon Valley is just banking in slow motion.
This is true. Look at any of the 70's and 80's computer magazines on archive.org, and you'll see only about 20% of the ads are from companies in SV. All the others are scattered in cities big and small from coast to coast.
It's amazing to think that small towns in Illinois and rural Virginia used to have big players in the hardware industry.
Now, with the exception of the increasingly rare spark from Apple, it's not about building innovative and interesting physical things anymore. It's about taking other people's money and shuffling it around trying to make more of it through half-baked startup ideas. Silicon Valley is just banking in slow motion.
My favorite story of computer companies was Coleco, which was a former leather company turned into a pool manufacturer to a video game and computer company. HQ in Connecticut and Amsterdam, NY of all places.
It was a cool computer too — to this day their super action controllers are my favorite game controller.
It was a cool computer too — to this day their super action controllers are my favorite game controller.
Yeah, I remember the ColecoVision and the Adam (which could wipe your tapes if powered on/off with the tapes in the drive iirc).
Unfortunately, many of my computers came from that OTHER leather turned electronics company -- Tandy.
Unfortunately, many of my computers came from that OTHER leather turned electronics company -- Tandy.
[deleted]
> innovative
What was the last thing Apple made that wasn't just a marginally polished version of someone else's invention?
What was the last thing Apple made that wasn't just a marginally polished version of someone else's invention?
Remember Apple was acquired by NeXT. NeXT made the first Unix workstations non-technical users could actually use.
Their use of solid-state storage on the MacBook Air family enabled ultra-thin laptops others copied later on. Backlit keyboards (debuted in the Titanium Powerbooks). It seems everyone else just makes marginally cheaper versions of things Apple did first.
Their use of solid-state storage on the MacBook Air family enabled ultra-thin laptops others copied later on. Backlit keyboards (debuted in the Titanium Powerbooks). It seems everyone else just makes marginally cheaper versions of things Apple did first.
>What was the last thing Apple made that wasn't just a marginally polished version of someone else's invention?
Search the patent database.
Search the patent database.
This might be a bit hyperbolic, but I agree with the general thrust. Their watch was a pretty clear response to Pebble. The iPhone was an impressive achievement, but smartphones had been available for 6 years when it was released. The iPod was certainly the best MP3 player, but it was far from the first.
That's not really a knock on Apple; they've been very successful jumping in to proven markets with incredibly polished versions of existing products. But I agree it's been a long while since they've done anything as innovative as their early days. They got a nice injection of innovation when they brought back Jobs's other company, NeXT, including the foundation of all their current operating systems. But even that stuff is almost 30 years old.
That's not really a knock on Apple; they've been very successful jumping in to proven markets with incredibly polished versions of existing products. But I agree it's been a long while since they've done anything as innovative as their early days. They got a nice injection of innovation when they brought back Jobs's other company, NeXT, including the foundation of all their current operating systems. But even that stuff is almost 30 years old.
Innovation doesn’t have to happen at the product level; it can also apply to manufacturing. For example, Dell innovated the supply chain of desktop computers.
For Apple, there’s lots of innovation in the way they create hardware at scale with previously unheard of tolerances. For example, when they thought “let’s make a laptop chassis from milled aliminium” they couldn’t just send the design out to a company used to making millions of milled aluminum bodies of that size.
Apple also innovated by bringing 64-bit CPUs to mobile phones (not a surprising innovation, but they managed to do it earlier than many people suspected were possible)
For Apple, there’s lots of innovation in the way they create hardware at scale with previously unheard of tolerances. For example, when they thought “let’s make a laptop chassis from milled aliminium” they couldn’t just send the design out to a company used to making millions of milled aluminum bodies of that size.
Apple also innovated by bringing 64-bit CPUs to mobile phones (not a surprising innovation, but they managed to do it earlier than many people suspected were possible)
> smartphones had been available for 6 years when it was released.
I had a Sony Ericsson P-800 when the iPhone was launched. It was the first smartphone that didn't look like something out of Star Trek (and I mean it in a bad way). When you compare an iPhone with my P-800, it looks like the iPhone is something that actually came from the future.
I had a Sony Ericsson P-800 when the iPhone was launched. It was the first smartphone that didn't look like something out of Star Trek (and I mean it in a bad way). When you compare an iPhone with my P-800, it looks like the iPhone is something that actually came from the future.
Sure. I had a Palm Treo. The iPhone was definitely a better product, a highly evolved one from a consumer perspective. But it's not like Apple invented the smartphone or the MP3 player. They did improve them drastically from the user perspective, and they are amazing marketers. I give them full credit for that, but rxhernandez has a point.
> it's not like Apple invented the smartphone or the MP3 player
It's not. It's more like they invented the first usable smartphone and the MP3 player everyone would want to have.
There is a parallel with the Apple II here - it was one of the very first personal computers that was approachable, self-contained (with a real keyboard built-in), booted from a ROM with an easy to use programming language, could display color, output sound, and had expansion slots that were usually hidden under a beige cover. Apple didn't invent the personal computer - they only made one of the first ones people would actually want to use.
It's not. It's more like they invented the first usable smartphone and the MP3 player everyone would want to have.
There is a parallel with the Apple II here - it was one of the very first personal computers that was approachable, self-contained (with a real keyboard built-in), booted from a ROM with an easy to use programming language, could display color, output sound, and had expansion slots that were usually hidden under a beige cover. Apple didn't invent the personal computer - they only made one of the first ones people would actually want to use.
Oh, for sure. They're absolutely going to keep squeezing more and more rent out until they kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. It's politically inevitable.
Toxic waste
Why are you wherever you live and not Shenzhen?
Family, friends, culture, lack of means to communicate?
Just because some yearn for something in a area does not mean they want to live in the area.
Personally I yearn for programming meetups, but everytime I look in my area all is PHP/webdev based; or a hour drive to a major city.
All because I want to live close to my family, friends and speak my mother tongue.
Just because some yearn for something in a area does not mean they want to live in the area.
Personally I yearn for programming meetups, but everytime I look in my area all is PHP/webdev based; or a hour drive to a major city.
All because I want to live close to my family, friends and speak my mother tongue.
Outsourcing basically. All hail the almighty growth curve...
The factories are almost next-door.
Akihabara still has some nice shops.
Zhongguancun in Beijing used to have a lot of emalls, but they’ve been retreating over time as all this stuff moves online.
Zhongguancun in Beijing used to have a lot of emalls, but they’ve been retreating over time as all this stuff moves online.
>Akihabara still has some nice shops.
Akihabara jumped the shark almost ten years ago. Now it's mostly a legend fueled by internet wanna-be otaku who have never been to, and never will go to Japan.
I remember exploring the impossibly narrow vertical electronics stores of Akihabara in the late 80's and early 90's and you never knew what you might find.
I still stop by a couple of times a year, but these days it's just a place to find iPhone accessories and old parts for restoring vintage PC clones.
When the iPhone became the #1 phone in Japan, it was over. Just about the only interesting thing about Aki these days is the maid cafes. Everything else is tourist cosplay junk.
Akihabara jumped the shark almost ten years ago. Now it's mostly a legend fueled by internet wanna-be otaku who have never been to, and never will go to Japan.
I remember exploring the impossibly narrow vertical electronics stores of Akihabara in the late 80's and early 90's and you never knew what you might find.
I still stop by a couple of times a year, but these days it's just a place to find iPhone accessories and old parts for restoring vintage PC clones.
When the iPhone became the #1 phone in Japan, it was over. Just about the only interesting thing about Aki these days is the maid cafes. Everything else is tourist cosplay junk.
They still have many narrow vertical electronics stores in Akihabara. You really still don't know what you might find. It is a real treat. I have been there three times in the past five years and each time has been roughly the same. There are at least a dozen store fronts for each class of component you can think of and they are nestled in these walkways underneath buildings, in alleys, or on street fronts.
Akiba is still the place to go for all those parts, there are just fewer stores and you have to know where to look. I worked at a startup that constantly needed parts for the hardware component and the engineer would go to Akiba, and only Akiba, atleast a few times a month for components for a device that was connected to a vending machine.
You're not going to get a deal on common consumer electronics like a camera or video games, but even still its pretty rare that there is a place where you can go and see nearly any consumer electronic you could possibly want in person.
You're not going to get a deal on common consumer electronics like a camera or video games, but even still its pretty rare that there is a place where you can go and see nearly any consumer electronic you could possibly want in person.
The maid cafes aren't that interesting. Agree with everything else. Most of the shops now are manned by Immigrants from Nepal.
-> only interesting thing about Aki these days is the maid cafes. Everything else is tourist cosplay junk.
Sorry but that is not a good summary. Only a small part of akihabara is built for tourist. And how is maid cafe the only interesting thing?
Sorry but that is not a good summary. Only a small part of akihabara is built for tourist. And how is maid cafe the only interesting thing?
reaperducer must really like being called "Goshujin-sama".
You can still find some interesting shops. Ham radio, specialty lightbulbs, robot component shops, for a few examples.
The last time I went I was just thinking how my inaka HARD OFF was every bit as interesting as the Akiba shops these days...
There's still Super Potato at least.. but mostly I agree
Golden Computer Arcade in Hong Kong is really worth visiting too.
http://www.12hk.com/area/ShamShuiPo/GoldenShoppingArcade.sht...
http://www.12hk.com/area/ShamShuiPo/GoldenShoppingArcade.sht...
Al's Electronics in Berkeley is still on.
Haltek Electronics
I think Donut Wheel may be located on unincorporated land, because it was one of the last places where smoking was legal indoors. It was packed with smokers all the time.
Lou's (San Jose) is long gone, and Stan's was ruined by the people who took it over a few years ago, so Donut Wheel is the only decent donut place around anymore.
> Vivi's is gone.
Yeah, it was kind of disappointing that they replaced it with a Starbucks of all things…
Yeah, it was kind of disappointing that they replaced it with a Starbucks of all things…
> Oh wow, I'm sad.
This is not a sadness per se, it's the by-the-book nostalgia.
This is not a sadness per se, it's the by-the-book nostalgia.
Nostalgia is a sentimentality for the past,
typically for a period or place with happy
personal associations."April 6, 2018
To Weirdstuff Customers,
Sadly, after 32 years in business, Weirdstuff Warehouse will be closing its doors as of April 9, 2018. If you have been following the real estate news for Sunnyvale you know that Google purchased a large amount of real estate in the area including the building we have been leasing for the past 22 years. We have been asked to vacate the building as soon as possible, and in order to accomplish that task we are selling our inventory and many of our assets to Outback Equipment of Morgan Hill. The transfer of inventory and assets will take place on April 9, 2018; at that time Weirdstuff Warehouse will cease to do business.
Even though Weirdstuff is closing we will retain ownership of the Corporation, trademark, and domain names. We hope to handle these entities and wind down the corporation before year end.
Many of you have been loyal customers for many years, and we have enjoyed working with you. We thank you for your loyalty and business."
To Weirdstuff Customers,
Sadly, after 32 years in business, Weirdstuff Warehouse will be closing its doors as of April 9, 2018. If you have been following the real estate news for Sunnyvale you know that Google purchased a large amount of real estate in the area including the building we have been leasing for the past 22 years. We have been asked to vacate the building as soon as possible, and in order to accomplish that task we are selling our inventory and many of our assets to Outback Equipment of Morgan Hill. The transfer of inventory and assets will take place on April 9, 2018; at that time Weirdstuff Warehouse will cease to do business.
Even though Weirdstuff is closing we will retain ownership of the Corporation, trademark, and domain names. We hope to handle these entities and wind down the corporation before year end.
Many of you have been loyal customers for many years, and we have enjoyed working with you. We thank you for your loyalty and business."
I guess I can do without Weirdstuff for a few more youtube censors.
Great Thread (with pictures) of what this warehouse used to sell: https://twitter.com/drahardja/status/982872448906346496
Reminds me of the goodwill computer store in Austin.
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/10/29/1823212/welcome...
In the late 1990's they had a lot of "junk", which a couple of the employees curated into a museum of early computing. Then they moved buildings (from where vans autoparts is to the goodwill complex east of 35). The museum was formalized, but they also instituted some kind of "policy" that apparently went along the lines of "if its not in a black PC case put it in the recycling bin" and the guys running the dropoff/collection promptly "recycled" tons of rare stuff that in many cases could have been sold on ebay for 100x what they were making in the computer store itself (queue story of racing there to retrieve a high end 10 year old sun server only to be told it was in the bottom of a dumpster being shipped off to china/wherever to be "recycled").
So the store itself became worthless since it really only sold 3-4 year old PCs for frequently for more than what could be had on a good day at fry's. It stopped being a place to find parts for older machines, which made it effectively useless.
A couple years ago they closed down the computer museum too. I remember reading that they sent some of the documentation/etc to UT, some of the hardware to other museums and sold the rest of it on ebay or recycled it.
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/10/29/1823212/welcome...
In the late 1990's they had a lot of "junk", which a couple of the employees curated into a museum of early computing. Then they moved buildings (from where vans autoparts is to the goodwill complex east of 35). The museum was formalized, but they also instituted some kind of "policy" that apparently went along the lines of "if its not in a black PC case put it in the recycling bin" and the guys running the dropoff/collection promptly "recycled" tons of rare stuff that in many cases could have been sold on ebay for 100x what they were making in the computer store itself (queue story of racing there to retrieve a high end 10 year old sun server only to be told it was in the bottom of a dumpster being shipped off to china/wherever to be "recycled").
So the store itself became worthless since it really only sold 3-4 year old PCs for frequently for more than what could be had on a good day at fry's. It stopped being a place to find parts for older machines, which made it effectively useless.
A couple years ago they closed down the computer museum too. I remember reading that they sent some of the documentation/etc to UT, some of the hardware to other museums and sold the rest of it on ebay or recycled it.
That place bit me hard. I had a too-big microcomputer collection that came with me from San Jose to Austin in 2004. At first I would drop by Computer Works when I was passing by, but it was almost never open, a bad sign. My wife prevailed on me to reduce my collection, so I thought of them. I had fully work HP-85 (except the tape drive), HP-86, and HP-87 computers, with manuals, disk drives, many ROM options, manuals, and software. It had taken me about five years of haunting ebay and bay area HAMfests to collect it all.
When I went to Computer Works, the guy at the register said to donate at the regular Goodwill next door. I was leery, but OK, it is their shop. I drove around the back, told the guy this was donations for the Computer Works and that everything was organized into groups -- hardware/software specific for a given machine was together. I started unloading my car into piles, and on the third or fourth trip I noticed that the receiving guy completely ignored me and had taken all the printed material and chucked it into a huge bin along with all the other random books and magazines they collected. I just about blew a gasket, but I promised my wife I would get rid of it.
I came back a few times in subsequent months, and it never showed up in the museum, and it never showed up on their "for sale" section. I assume it all got recycled.
When I went to Computer Works, the guy at the register said to donate at the regular Goodwill next door. I was leery, but OK, it is their shop. I drove around the back, told the guy this was donations for the Computer Works and that everything was organized into groups -- hardware/software specific for a given machine was together. I started unloading my car into piles, and on the third or fourth trip I noticed that the receiving guy completely ignored me and had taken all the printed material and chucked it into a huge bin along with all the other random books and magazines they collected. I just about blew a gasket, but I promised my wife I would get rid of it.
I came back a few times in subsequent months, and it never showed up in the museum, and it never showed up on their "for sale" section. I assume it all got recycled.
[deleted]
This is such a sad story.
damn those iomega jaz & zip drives bring back memories...thanks for sharing
Heh, I’ve left quite a number of Jaz and Zip drives at weirdstuff!
bad memories... they were never reliable for me. click of death etc
The zip drive failure rate was less than 1% and the "click of death" had hundreds of causes in the percentage that failed.
You see, the Zip drive had a parked head. When the head came out to read the disk it would "click" as the head left it's dock and came out to the media. If it failed to read the media it would click again as it re-docked. This all happened fairly quickly and was the "click-click" sound you heard when a drive failed for almost any reason.
That proved to be a very difficult problem that ultimately led to the class action suit that I believe was the companies demise. It survived in name for a number of years, but really only in name.
The lawsuit itself didn't seem to affect the company that much but it affected policy a lot. Their next drive could have been the next big craze. It was ready way before compact flash came along but the company refused to ship it because the failure rate was slightly above 1%. We spent a few years trying to reduce the failure rate by fractions and we all know that a few years is ages is technology.
You see, the Zip drive had a parked head. When the head came out to read the disk it would "click" as the head left it's dock and came out to the media. If it failed to read the media it would click again as it re-docked. This all happened fairly quickly and was the "click-click" sound you heard when a drive failed for almost any reason.
That proved to be a very difficult problem that ultimately led to the class action suit that I believe was the companies demise. It survived in name for a number of years, but really only in name.
The lawsuit itself didn't seem to affect the company that much but it affected policy a lot. Their next drive could have been the next big craze. It was ready way before compact flash came along but the company refused to ship it because the failure rate was slightly above 1%. We spent a few years trying to reduce the failure rate by fractions and we all know that a few years is ages is technology.
Both my friend and I had drives with the click of death problem. It could be a 1 in 10,000 event, or it could be that the rate was higher than 1%. I remember it being a very common problem at the time.
I worked in support there during the Zip drive boom. My first tech job and it was a wild few years.
It was fun to see products that I helped ship wind up on the shelves at Weird Stuff. Kind of a sideways honor . . .
I had the honor of seeing one of my designs at the De Anza electronics flea market before it was even in production. Turns out it had been stolen from the shipping and receiving area.
Their original location was a little ways across the Lawrence Expressway from the original Fry's, which was near the original Computer Literacy Bookstore, which was in the same small shopping center as a Togo's.
That made for a perfect nerd resupply run plus lunch trip.
That made for a perfect nerd resupply run plus lunch trip.
Coincidentally, this Saturday will be the Electronics Flea Market at Fry's Sunnyvale, nearby:
https://www.evilmadscientist.com/2018/electronics-flea-marke...
https://www.evilmadscientist.com/2018/electronics-flea-marke...
"The market opens around 5:00am and closes at 12:00 Noon."
WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?? I've yet to make one of these because of it's random timing and, most importantly, the ridiculous time it's open. If I do get lucky and remember, it's usually around 11:45 a.m. on the day of...
WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?? I've yet to make one of these because of it's random timing and, most importantly, the ridiculous time it's open. If I do get lucky and remember, it's usually around 11:45 a.m. on the day of...
The people who go to these things are maximum early-birds. These are the people who will knock on your door at 6am if you post a yard sale sign.
Garage sale people are early people. My mom deals antiques, and on the weekends when she goes to garage sales, she's out the door before 6AM. 5AM is maybe a little extreme, but 6AM is what I would expect of something that targets garage sale and flea market type shoppers.
some vendors show up later in the morning
It's competitive. There's a finite supply of good deals and if you're profiting from flipping this stuff on ebay as a major source of your income, 0500 is just a number.
I will always love Dallas' First Saturday Sidewalk Sale.
They too lost their lease.
Gather under the Woodall Rogers Freeway throughout the night, and into early morning, eat some potato chips, buy some cheapo gear and get on with your project.
I'm astounded we don't have something more like it in the Bay Area.
They too lost their lease.
Gather under the Woodall Rogers Freeway throughout the night, and into early morning, eat some potato chips, buy some cheapo gear and get on with your project.
I'm astounded we don't have something more like it in the Bay Area.
Wasn't there a recurring swap meet at De Anza College at one point?
Yes, every month. I guess it's moving to the Sunnyvale Fry's parking lot as of this month though:
http://www.electronicsfleamarket.com
http://www.electronicsfleamarket.com
It is an interesting testament to how Silicon Valley has changed over the last couple of decades.
When I moved to the 'valley of the nerds' in the 80's there were dozens of places where you could buy electronics at "retail" prices, and there were places where companies disposed of electronics they weren't going to use for "scrap" prices. This is where the places like WeirdStuff, Halted, Zacks, Alltronics, and others thrived.
There were many manufacturing companies that did prototype or small run manufacturing. There were companies that started up and closed down. There were labs that were opened, closed, or changed in some way. It lead a bunch of places where used (sometimes lightly and sometimes not so much) gear and parts were bought for pennies on the dollar and sold for nickels on the dollar.
The really cool thing about the "surplus" market was you could walk through isles of stuff where parts that someone payed thousands of dollars to have machined were selling for a few tens of dollars. Chips, like FPGAs, that were $1500 each selling for $5 each. Connectors, switches, transistors, and all sorts of discrete components that sold very cheaply. The good news was it was cheap, the bad news was that when they ran out, they were not getting any more in.
I bought from them, I sold to them, they were the source of many a project which could be built cheaply because you weren't paying full freight.
A number of things have conspired over the last 20 years which changed this world. Of course part of it was that a lot of manufacturing went off shore. Now when someone had to by 50,000 chips to build 45,000 units, the 5,000 they had left over ends up in the stalls at Shenzen not the shelves of a surplus store in the Bay Area. Another factor was that after the turn of the century parts became more specialized and manufacturers more secretive so while a complete data sheet of an Intel video controller was available in their data books, register level access to the NVIDIA or S3 chips was protected by strict nondisclosure agreements. The other change was that as manufacturing moved, the things that supported them moved, calibration labs, certification labs, PCB manufacturing, and assembly. So what was a steady stream of 10 year old test equipment that had been shuffled out of these places because the new stuff could hand the new speeds etc, that started drying up.
The typical experience of walking into one of these shops were aisles and aisles of "stuff" from compoents, to partial assemblies, to full assemblies. I walked into Halted one day and they had three pager transmitters that someone had surplused out. With the three of them you could easily create a single working one with some spares and set up your own private pager network. When the company that made Ricochet modems (an old wireless peer to peer networking systems) went bust not only did their modems show up in the surplus market but so did test equipment for characterizing their power output and frequency spurs. Stuff that an RF lab would pay $50,000 to put together yours for the low low price of $1,500 or so. Sometimes you would come across really cryptic, possibly alien, artifacts. For example there was a stainless steel clamp with a micrometer dial attached to it where a position adjustment would be made. The dial moved freely but it didn't seem to adjust the position of the clamp. I figured it was a manufacturing defect until a friend of mine pointed out the units on the dial was angstroms. We figured out that these were part of a fixture for making optical cables and would help align the fiber and connector in terms of nanometers (a very very small amount). One day we went to the new arrivals table at Weird Stuff and they had a complete seeker head for an AIM-9 sidewinder missile. They were asking $5,000 for it (I offered them something silly like $500). The next week it was gone and I asked if they had sold it, the clerk said no, the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms had showed up with the FBI can confiscated it. Apparently it was possible to derive classified information about the missile by looking at the seeker head.
At the turn of the century during the Y2K period hundreds of computers that the manufacturer was unwilling or unable to make Y2K complaint showed up. This included PDP-11's and MicroVAX systems. I ended up with an example of every QBUS based MicroVAX ever sold by DEC. They were kind of like pokemon monsters, at some point you felt you had to have one of each.
These days most of the startups are purely software based. And their infrastructure they rent from Amazon or Google or Microsoft. Those companies have recycle programs that cut out the surplus vendors and usually don't leave anything usable. When a typical Silicon Valley company decides to "sell off their assets" that generally means office chairs, white boards, and the occasional espresso machine. Not test equipment, test fixtures, extra parts, and tools. And it is also true that fewer people are trying to put together an EE lab or RF lab on the cheap, or get their HP^h^hAgilent^h^h^h^h^h^h^hKeysight test equipment calibrated. Chips are either cheap and commodity from places like Digikey, or they are expensive and only obtainable through a mutual NDA with a company.
So the era ends as the long tail stretches into the future. It is sad that folks here won't be able to experience the Silicon Valley that I did but by the same token my version of the valley was different than the semiconductor manufacturing version (60's - 70's).
When I moved to the 'valley of the nerds' in the 80's there were dozens of places where you could buy electronics at "retail" prices, and there were places where companies disposed of electronics they weren't going to use for "scrap" prices. This is where the places like WeirdStuff, Halted, Zacks, Alltronics, and others thrived.
There were many manufacturing companies that did prototype or small run manufacturing. There were companies that started up and closed down. There were labs that were opened, closed, or changed in some way. It lead a bunch of places where used (sometimes lightly and sometimes not so much) gear and parts were bought for pennies on the dollar and sold for nickels on the dollar.
The really cool thing about the "surplus" market was you could walk through isles of stuff where parts that someone payed thousands of dollars to have machined were selling for a few tens of dollars. Chips, like FPGAs, that were $1500 each selling for $5 each. Connectors, switches, transistors, and all sorts of discrete components that sold very cheaply. The good news was it was cheap, the bad news was that when they ran out, they were not getting any more in.
I bought from them, I sold to them, they were the source of many a project which could be built cheaply because you weren't paying full freight.
A number of things have conspired over the last 20 years which changed this world. Of course part of it was that a lot of manufacturing went off shore. Now when someone had to by 50,000 chips to build 45,000 units, the 5,000 they had left over ends up in the stalls at Shenzen not the shelves of a surplus store in the Bay Area. Another factor was that after the turn of the century parts became more specialized and manufacturers more secretive so while a complete data sheet of an Intel video controller was available in their data books, register level access to the NVIDIA or S3 chips was protected by strict nondisclosure agreements. The other change was that as manufacturing moved, the things that supported them moved, calibration labs, certification labs, PCB manufacturing, and assembly. So what was a steady stream of 10 year old test equipment that had been shuffled out of these places because the new stuff could hand the new speeds etc, that started drying up.
The typical experience of walking into one of these shops were aisles and aisles of "stuff" from compoents, to partial assemblies, to full assemblies. I walked into Halted one day and they had three pager transmitters that someone had surplused out. With the three of them you could easily create a single working one with some spares and set up your own private pager network. When the company that made Ricochet modems (an old wireless peer to peer networking systems) went bust not only did their modems show up in the surplus market but so did test equipment for characterizing their power output and frequency spurs. Stuff that an RF lab would pay $50,000 to put together yours for the low low price of $1,500 or so. Sometimes you would come across really cryptic, possibly alien, artifacts. For example there was a stainless steel clamp with a micrometer dial attached to it where a position adjustment would be made. The dial moved freely but it didn't seem to adjust the position of the clamp. I figured it was a manufacturing defect until a friend of mine pointed out the units on the dial was angstroms. We figured out that these were part of a fixture for making optical cables and would help align the fiber and connector in terms of nanometers (a very very small amount). One day we went to the new arrivals table at Weird Stuff and they had a complete seeker head for an AIM-9 sidewinder missile. They were asking $5,000 for it (I offered them something silly like $500). The next week it was gone and I asked if they had sold it, the clerk said no, the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms had showed up with the FBI can confiscated it. Apparently it was possible to derive classified information about the missile by looking at the seeker head.
At the turn of the century during the Y2K period hundreds of computers that the manufacturer was unwilling or unable to make Y2K complaint showed up. This included PDP-11's and MicroVAX systems. I ended up with an example of every QBUS based MicroVAX ever sold by DEC. They were kind of like pokemon monsters, at some point you felt you had to have one of each.
These days most of the startups are purely software based. And their infrastructure they rent from Amazon or Google or Microsoft. Those companies have recycle programs that cut out the surplus vendors and usually don't leave anything usable. When a typical Silicon Valley company decides to "sell off their assets" that generally means office chairs, white boards, and the occasional espresso machine. Not test equipment, test fixtures, extra parts, and tools. And it is also true that fewer people are trying to put together an EE lab or RF lab on the cheap, or get their HP^h^hAgilent^h^h^h^h^h^h^hKeysight test equipment calibrated. Chips are either cheap and commodity from places like Digikey, or they are expensive and only obtainable through a mutual NDA with a company.
So the era ends as the long tail stretches into the future. It is sad that folks here won't be able to experience the Silicon Valley that I did but by the same token my version of the valley was different than the semiconductor manufacturing version (60's - 70's).
This is the best thing I've read about the closing of WSW, because it helps me put the entire situation in perspective. I'm as sad as ever about it all, but considering it in the context of the entire arc of the Silicon Valley story is comforting in some way. Wistful, but at least it's satisfying.
Maybe it's time to consider moving to Shenzhen. There certainly does seem to be a thriving maker and hacker community there.
Maybe it's time to consider moving to Shenzhen. There certainly does seem to be a thriving maker and hacker community there.
Your last sentence reminds me of this recent post https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHP-OPXK2ig and it gives such a cool sense of Shenzhen as a place to make and modify things.
I've been putting together a better lab and it's pretty tough. On eBay, most sellers are very optimistic about their prices, making it a bit tough to put together a lab as a student. There are few resellers like WeirdStuff around, and most e-waste gets shipped off to somewhere with laxer environmental regulations.
The only real way to buy industrial parts and equipment is to live in a big city and attend industrial bankruptcy auctions. Most of the time it's machine tools, but occasionally a prototyping shop will go bust or a local university will do a surplus sale. These are the only real way to get decent gear reliably I've found.
The only real way to buy industrial parts and equipment is to live in a big city and attend industrial bankruptcy auctions. Most of the time it's machine tools, but occasionally a prototyping shop will go bust or a local university will do a surplus sale. These are the only real way to get decent gear reliably I've found.
A lot of the inventor tinker stuff has moved to other countries. I mean, you see children build solar power plants for the watering cleaning system and micro farms that they’ve also build in Africa.
I’m sure things are even weirder in Asia.
I’m sure things are even weirder in Asia.
pre internet I remember driving to Stevens Creek Boulevard from San Francisco for all the Indian pc stores, and visiting Frys and weirdstuff and other places I knew the location of and what they sold but didn't know the name. These days everything is online and apart from places like Jameco - which are online too - physical retail locations in the valley are very last century. Very sad to see WeirdStuff go though...
Some of what is making the world smaller is also making it better. I sometimes lament that you can find literally anything online; no longer can you find some amazing Walkman model in Tokyo that will blow away your friends back home in the US, nor find a truly unique souvenir you just HAVE to go to Europe for. That loss of exclusivity/rarity is a good thing, but it feels like you've lost something when you can no longer have that cool rare/weird thing.
It also means that now a developer in Shenzen can prototype in a matter of hours, while I have to wait 2 weeks for shipping to Europe.
This made me really sad. Maybe it is time to move to Shenzhen.
Its the end of an era.
I've bought so much stuff here, its one of the only places you could easily find rack shelves that weren't a zillion dollars a piece. Or really any kind of rack mountable gear in the silicon valley. I still have some switches from there.
I've bought so much stuff here, its one of the only places you could easily find rack shelves that weren't a zillion dollars a piece. Or really any kind of rack mountable gear in the silicon valley. I still have some switches from there.
A long time ago I bought a serial terminal and a whole bunch of serial cables from them. Along with a Cisco PIX. I still have all of that somewhere in my garage.
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For those missing Weird Stuff, who haven't been to Halted Electronics, I highly recommend paying their warehouse in Santa Clara a visit. Big warehouse chock full of surplus goods.
Take your kids there if you have 'em, and while they still exist. I have many fond memories of afternoons spent in these places.
Take your kids there if you have 'em, and while they still exist. I have many fond memories of afternoons spent in these places.
The impression I got is that Halted really prices stuff up to about the maximum of what they can get away with. But still, I do appreciate them existing.
Someone is inevitably going to say: "Well, they need the prices that high in order to pay costs." But I don't think the person with that line of argument has thought their argument through deeply.
Various things start happening when prices get up to gouge level: inventory starts getting stolen by bitter people who otherwise would have been customers, or inventory simply doesn't move as fast, and customers aren't as happy and tend not to be as supportive. My most recent purchase there was a small glass lens (smaller than a mini Altoids mint... yes, mini, not regular size) and it was an average sized one, not unique, from a random bag of similar sized ones, not any certain spec for any specific purpose, and they got $8 for that. Weird stuff had all their lenses bought up the week before that, go figure.
Weird Stuff, on the other hand, was dirt cheap and very cheerful about everything, and their customers were huge fans, from what I know. Halted... I do still like them, but they sure are grumpy and those prices, sigh.
Still, maybe if Weird Stuff had higher prices (slightly higher... not Halted-level higher, mkay?) they could have survived and moved nearby? I guess we'll never know.
Someone is inevitably going to say: "Well, they need the prices that high in order to pay costs." But I don't think the person with that line of argument has thought their argument through deeply.
Various things start happening when prices get up to gouge level: inventory starts getting stolen by bitter people who otherwise would have been customers, or inventory simply doesn't move as fast, and customers aren't as happy and tend not to be as supportive. My most recent purchase there was a small glass lens (smaller than a mini Altoids mint... yes, mini, not regular size) and it was an average sized one, not unique, from a random bag of similar sized ones, not any certain spec for any specific purpose, and they got $8 for that. Weird stuff had all their lenses bought up the week before that, go figure.
Weird Stuff, on the other hand, was dirt cheap and very cheerful about everything, and their customers were huge fans, from what I know. Halted... I do still like them, but they sure are grumpy and those prices, sigh.
Still, maybe if Weird Stuff had higher prices (slightly higher... not Halted-level higher, mkay?) they could have survived and moved nearby? I guess we'll never know.
Nice, on-line place for optical stuff: https://www.surplusshed.com/
Wow, looks like a great source! Thanks.
I was lucky enough to get to go to weirdstuff a few times over the past year, and it’s sad to see it go. I have witnessed the fall of surplus stores over the last decade or so. It seems like they lost touch with what hobbyists want. You’d see piles of corporate IP phones, which no one would find interesting. Piles of rackmount servers for way too much. Piles of hard drives from 1988 that almost certainly won’t hold data. It was bleak. Meanwhile, hobbyist electronics is thriving. Arduinos are flying off the shelves at Amazon.
I saw pictures of Core2-Xeon era servers - did they have newer stuff by the end? I figure most of the secondary demand is for at least Nehalem by now, probably Sandy Bridge+.
That said, I would've made the trip up if I had word a couple of weeks ahead of time! I love seeing the variety of stuff, even if it's not terribly useful these days ;)
That said, I would've made the trip up if I had word a couple of weeks ahead of time! I love seeing the variety of stuff, even if it's not terribly useful these days ;)
I had so much fun digging through there in the late 90s. We got an SGI Onyx from there for a couple hundred bucks and turned it into a liquor cabinet. So much unique stuff you never knew existed there. Really the most appropriately named store. Disappointing. :(
At some point, we're gonna have to stop pretending "Silicon Valley" is still built on silicon and come up with another name for the place. (Maybe, "Private Surveillance Valley".)
Fun place, I remember getting hard-to-find power supplies around the end of the 80's for the robots I used to support.
I also remember a client who picked up computer parts that he had to machine/adapt to get to work together, back around 1993, I think. He lamented that they spent more time trying to get stuff to connect (physically and electronically) than actually learning about how computers work (the original intent of the class he took). I am not sure if it was his idea or the instructor's to get parts from WeirdStuff...
I also remember a client who picked up computer parts that he had to machine/adapt to get to work together, back around 1993, I think. He lamented that they spent more time trying to get stuff to connect (physically and electronically) than actually learning about how computers work (the original intent of the class he took). I am not sure if it was his idea or the instructor's to get parts from WeirdStuff...
Not the same, but equally weird: American Science and Surplus (https://www.sciplus.com). Their focus is split between educational toys and surplus scientific and electronic equipment and components. It's a good place to shop for robot parts.
I wish American Science and Surplus was as cool (to me) as Weird Stuff Warehouse. There is very little at AS&S that is completely unknown to me the way some stuff at WSW was. I'm glad it exists though, and their yearly outdoor sale is a little closer to the WSW vibe. A lot less computers though.
I visited Weirdstuff earlier this year looking for parts to mount a vertical PDU. I found spare 45U l-brackets and a u-bracket I'm pretty sure was designed for the problem I was solving--I'll miss digging through part bins and wandering down the aisles.
I knew I was an old silly valley engineer after I saw hardware I worked on at weird stuff. Then later I saw other hardware I worked on a Halted.
Then you see it in the Silicon Valley Museum of Technology - what does that make you?
Arrived.
Any suggestions of similar places on the Bay Area to visit/shop? Just went to my first Fry's a few weeks ago!
Halted Electronics is pretty fun to visit. On Corvin and Central Expressway in Santa Clara, a little bit east of Lawrence Expressway.
Go to the Electronics flea put on by the Hams. Monthly on Saturday mornings.
Which is on this Saturday in the Fry's carpark in Sunnyvale! https://www.electronicsfleamarket.com/
Who remembers Mike Quinn (Mike passed away) in Oakland, or JDR Microdevices in San Jose (is Jeff from Cleveland still alive, his mother's account number was 1,000,000 BTW), or the fleamarket at ACP (Advanced Computer Products)in Santa Ana, Tom and Dave Freeman - do they still live?
The scrap yard at Space Age Metal Products - (the Kleins, now morphed into Classic Components) ...
when I would come out for business in the late 80's at Sun I would always stop at 3 places: Computer Literacy, Fry's and Weird Stuff Warehouse. WSW back then sold even more exotic hardware as the minicomputer era was running down. Nothing like finding VAX parts or even an RK05 disk drive. yes, everything changes but not always for the better, I will miss them.
Sad to see this go. For those in the Bay looking for surplus electronics there's still:
* http://anchor-electronics.com
* http://www.excesssolutions.com
* http://www.halted.com
* http://anchor-electronics.com
* http://www.excesssolutions.com
* http://www.halted.com
I never knew about these guys, what did they sell.
In the 90's I recall seeing a Cray supercomputer there at one point. I'm assuming that it was not functional, but it did have nifty bench seats.
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They were a surplus store - one of the last in the bay area to go.
I bought a vintage Apple /// there about 5 few years ago. Still works.
I went there a few times in the late '90s.
I had ended up with deprecated equipment from Sunnyvale Public Safety (my dad worked there). I had two different models of PowerPC Macs, an external scsi drive, and more cables than a could count, plus some other stuff.
I made several trips to Weird Stuff, so that I could make one usable computer out of the pile. I also learned the dreadful screech that PowerMacs made, when you put the RAM in wrong and turned it on.
I had ended up with deprecated equipment from Sunnyvale Public Safety (my dad worked there). I had two different models of PowerPC Macs, an external scsi drive, and more cables than a could count, plus some other stuff.
I made several trips to Weird Stuff, so that I could make one usable computer out of the pile. I also learned the dreadful screech that PowerMacs made, when you put the RAM in wrong and turned it on.
Oh damn, I loved those guys, I can’t believe they’re shutting down! Sorry to hear it Weirdstuff, I hope your next venture meets with success.
This makes me really sad. This place was invaluable when hacking on old hardware, it was a true institution of Silicon Valley.
It was sad to hear the fifteen minute warning on the intercom and to watch Gary lock up front for the last time.
Reminds me of when the Santa Clara MicroCenter closed down. The times they are a changin'.
I didn't know that place closed down. :-( I left the Valley a few years ago now for the DFW area. We have Fry's, MicroCenter, and still a few tech recycling places. Dallas reminds me of what the Valley used to be in many ways.
I about 2 weeks ago and it was full of really old shit that you were so sure you would never see again that you forgot it existed. It was the type of place you were really happy to know existed for any computer refurbishing project you could think of.
Eventually, weird stuff will appear here: http://stores.ebay.com/Outback-Equipment-Company
I hope they can, at least, ship stuff over here.
I hope they can, at least, ship stuff over here.
Man I went last week for the first time with a coworker and thought about buying an old record player, but decided "nah, we'll come back for it." Damn it, I guess not.
Oh man! I wish I knew this sooner! I would have gone and loaded up on crazy random tech stuff just to have it... (Maybe it's a good thing I didn't know, actually.) Sad day!
I drove by one of their warehouses everyday on my way to work in Sunnyvale for the better part of 4 years. They were right by LM and Yahoo!
I lived in the area for over two years and never heard of them until now. Sad, seems like there was a lot of interesting and weird stuff. :(
If you live in IL, check out Han's System. They sort of have the same look and feel as wierdstuff warehouse.
This is a sad day.
I'm sad to see them go.
I'm sad to see them go.
This is a total bummer. I remember when my dad took me here on the weekends.
Always a fun place to buy back something you'd worked on previously!
Nooooooooooooooooooooo
Passing of an icon.
Well, it was a good run.
No! My favorite place :(
Wow.. This is sad.
Who?
I came to the valley (no, the other one, up north) back around 1995. And Weird Stuff was absolutely one of the things that made it "Silicon" valley.
Back when I would BBS from Kansas and pore over text files listing BBS's I was green with envy at all the boards in Sunnyvale, Mountain View....
Coming out here was everything I had imagined when I walked into Fry's, Weird Stuff, Disk Drive Depot, The Computer Literacy Bookstore, Haltek Electronics....
Slowly though the hardware Mecca that was the valley gave way to the internet titans and software as Yahoo, Google, etc. appeared.
Fry's started selling T.V.s mainly.
The Saturday morning electronics surplus crawl that used to include a half-dozen stops became just HSC....
Weird Stuff moved out near the Sunnyvale dump.
The pizza dive on Steven's Creek that Woz loved became Pizza and Noodles, then just Falafels.
Vivi's is gone.
When the Donut Wheel closes shop it will be time for me to move on.