While I was visiting Portland last month, I made a quick stop at SurplusGizmos in Hillsboro.

SurplusGizmos is what an electronics store should be, and it’s the kind of place that I love to visit.  It’s also the kind of electronics store that is completely nonexistant in Austin (oh, my beloved HSC, how I miss you), but I digress…

You can usually tell a good surplus electronics store by the pile of junk outside the door (usually with a sign on it that says “Make Offer.”   I’m not kidding:

Inside SurplusGizmos, you’ll find aisles full of electronic components like resistors, capacitors, connectors, random semiconductors, fans, motors, and miscellaneous surplus stuff.  Paradise!

AVR microcontrollers! Forrest Mims books!

They have cabinets with drawers full of electrolytic capacitors!  Yes!  This is what a real electronics store is like!

This way, resistors by the foot!!  This ain’t no Radio Shack!

Aluminum by the pound!

Interesting pieces of surplus equipment sold for pennies on the dollar!

They have a huge selection of “solder samples”, printed circuit boards that are used to…

Actually, I’m sure what they are for.  I think they are used by the PCB manufacturer to test their process, but can someone comment about what solder samples are for, and why you always get one or two when you order a full panel of PCBs?

Anyway, there were LOTS of them.  Hundreds.  Looking at these panels reminded me of Dave Jones’ PCB Design for Manufacture video.  Lots of examples of v-scoring, tab-routing, fiducials, etc.

I picked up a few to use as coasters/wall art/whatever.

Apparently SurplusGizmos has some deal with Oregon Scientific and gets customer returns of their weather monitoring equipment.   It seemed like if you spent the time to collect all the right parts, you could build a complete indoor/outdoor wireless weather station for a fraction of the new cost.

I wish I could have spent more time there, but my time was limited and my luggage space was small.  Next time!

If you’re ever in the Portland area and want to see what a “real” electronics store is like – check this place out.

I took lots more photos, many of which are available on Flickr.

Oh, and SurplusGizmos is listed on the surplus electronics wiki.  If there’s a good electronics store in your area and it’s not on the wiki, add it!  Help keep these small, independently-owned electronics shops alive!

This is my kind of place.  Surplus electronics piled from floor to ceiling.  Lots of oscilloscopes and useful stuff mixed in with bizarre industrial equipment.

Lots of cool rack-mounted equipment here.  Lots of push-buttons too.

Need a random computer-related printed circuit board?

My recommendation for places like this is always to come to the counter with the biggest pile of stuff you can carry and haggle on a single price for everything.  You’ll end up paying a fair price for one or two big items and getting the rest thrown in “for free”.

Here’s what I went home with: HP chart recorder, some IC sockets, webcam stand, random RF module, and some kind of monitor shutoff device from back when ‘green’ was just a color.  This is a remarkably small pile of stuff given what was available, but I knew I would have to pack all this into my checked luggage on the flight home.

This was my first visit to Ali’s, and I came home really impressed.  I can’t think of a better place to find surplus electronics junk in the Sacramento area, especially now that HSC Electronics on Auburn Blvd. is gone.  I also feel that if you are looking for used industrial and test equipment, Ali’s has a better selection than Bay Area shops like Weird Stuff.  I will definitely be visiting Ali’s again the next time I’m Sacramento.

Ali’s Surplus Stuff is listed under Sacramento Area on the resources:surplus page of the MightyOhm Wiki.  Whew!

I’ve been making some changes and additions to the MightyOhm Wiki over the past few days.

To complement the awesome list of surplus electronics shops, I started creating wiki pages for the various projects I have previously documented on the blog.

Last night I added a list of cheap PID controllers to the wiki page for my DIY PID-controlled Soldering Hotplate.  (Backstory: the PID controller on my hotplate quit working this week and I’ve been shopping for a replacement!)

I have also  been adding more information to the PCB resources page, including where to order cheap solder paste stencils and resources for making test fixtures.

More to come…

Mitch and I are in the process of compiling a list of places to buy electronics parts and tools for a book we are writing about getting started with AVR microcontrollers.

Where do you go to buy electronic parts, tools, and other supplies?  Do you have a walk-in store in your area, or do you shop online?

I’m particularly interested in hearing from readers outside of the United States.  If you live in South America, where do you buy soldering irons, solder, resistors, capacitors, and other odds and ends?  Do you buy locally or online?  What about Europe?  Asia?  Africa?

If you do have a favorite place to shop for electronics goodies, leave a comment here or consider adding it to the MightyOhm Wiki!

The past few weeks have seen a lot of activity on the MightyOhm Wiki!

Since it was mentioned on the Make: blog last week, helpful readers have been making significant contributions every day.

One highlight of the wiki is the Surplus Electronics Resources page, which I first posted about in February.  It has more than quadrupled in size since then and now includes surplus shops in the United Kingdom and Canada in addition to dozens in the United States.  If you haven’t seen this page yet, you should definitely check it out.

If you don’t see your favorite electronics surplus store on the list, please add it!  Several of these “junk shops” close every year due to rising rents and competition online.   Anything we can do to keep them in business will benefit the maker community.  One way to do this is by making sure that folks know that these resources exist, and this is where I hope the wiki will help.

I want to express my sincere gratitude to everyone who has been contributing to the wiki.  In particular, thanks for making it one of the best directories of electronics surplus stores on the web!

Last May, my brother and I went on a week-long roadtrip across the US.  Ambling down the highway in a very large moving truck, we travelled from California to Texas by way of  Tuscon, Socorro, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Los Alamos, and quite a few rest stops, gas stations, and fast food restaurants in between.

Intoxicated by the chile verde, we spent considerable time in New Mexico, a state that neither of us had visited before.  One of the highlights of our visit to the Land of Enchantment was a side trip to Los Alamos, birthplace of the atomic bomb and home of two major attractions for any electronics geek:

Los Alamos National Labs

Sadly, armed guards prevented us from taking a close look at the Los Alamos National Labs.  Actually, the museum is pretty decent, and includes scale models of Fat Man and Little Boy, some exhibits about radioactivity and nuclear weapons, and a short film about the history of the labs.

The Black Hole

The Los Alamos Sales Company, aka The Black Hole, is a surplus store started in 1951 by the late ‘Atomic’ Ed Grothus, a former LANL machinist turned peace activist.

I have never seen a more fascinating collection of electronic test equipment, laboratory glassware, chunks of machined aluminum, LN2 dewars, bell jars, dusty old databooks, and just plain weird stuff.   Good news: most of it is for sale, although there are very few price tags around and some items are probably in the “if you have to ask…” category.

A controversial Los Alamos institution, it has even been the subject of a documentary, although I haven’t managed to track down a copy (yet).

Here are some photos to give you a taste of what it’s like to wander around The Black Hole:

A geiger counter near the front door clicks away in response to some radioactive source nearby.

One of several aisles of surplus test equipment. You name it, it’s here.

Mmm…  Organic Plutonium!

Anadex CF-300R Timer with gorgeous nixie display.

Racks of vintage test equipment.  Scopes, counters, power supplies, etc.

Period datasheet for the Fairchild uA741 operational amplifier.

Pan Am hard hat.

Oscilloscope with permanently attached scope camera.  This is the same setup you see in the pictures of atomic bomb test shacks in books such as How To Photograph an Atomic Bomb, by Peter Kuran.

Honestly, the pictures capture only 1% of what you’ll find here – you have to actually visit to appreciate this place. Oh, and budget an hour or two minimum.  If you enjoy looking at dual trace oscilloscopes and dusty cold war relics as much as I do, you’ll need an afternoon to really do it justice.  If you want to see more, check out my Bradbury Science Museum and The Black Hole albums on Flickr.

By the way, The Black Hole is listed on the Surplus Electronics page of the MightyOhm Wiki.  Is there a surplus electronics store in your city?  Add it to the wiki!

I am pleased to announce that the MightyOhm Wiki is now online and open to the public.

While there isn’t a ton of content yet, my hope is that the wiki will become a useful means to share information and resources relevant to the site.  At the moment, there are pages for electronics vendors, hardware/software tools, and PCB manufacturers.

Another page I have been working on for a while is the surplus directory, which lists surplus electronics stores around the country.  If you have a favorite surplus goldmine in your area, please create an account and add it to the wiki!

MightyOhm Has a Wiki.  Check it out.

45th Anniversary Celebration
Local Customer? Come on in and celebrate with us and save
10%-60% on everything in our stores. One day only!
Out of the Area? For our online customers, from September
23rd to 27th, HSC will offer *FREE shipping plus an additional 10%
off any order over $50.00. Just mention “Anniversary Special” in
the shopping cart order notes and we’ll take care of your discount.
The 6,000 items listed online are just a sample of our extensive store inventory.
Don’t see what you need? Please don’t hesitate to call us at 1-800-442-5833.

HSC is having some online specials too, although if you shop online you are missing out on 90% of the fun, such as sifting through crates of miscellaneous electronics parts!

Every project I work on usually involves at least one trip down to the South Bay to visit HSC, and I usually find at least a few interesting odds and ends at their annual clearance sales.  And while you’re in the area, I highly recommend a side trip to Weird Stuff Warehouse in Sunnyvale as well.

While I was there we spent a day checking out various electronics surplus shops in the area, several of which Tony had never visited before.

Here are the highlights of our tour:

All Electronics (Van Nuys, CA)

Most people know (or should know) of All Electronics as a catalog store with a long history in electronics and a decent website.  It turns out (I was surprised by this) that you can visit their retail store at 14928 Oxnard Street in Van Nuys.

The store doubles as a makeshift electronics museum, with lots of vintage consumer and industrial equipment strewn around the room.

Stuff to look for: power supplies, handfuls of LEDs, reels of SMT components.

Apex Electronics (Sun Valley, CA)

This is what surplus electronics is all about!  Absolute goldmine of bizarre electronics surplus equipment perched on the edge of civilization in Sun Valley.  Wire, motors, meters, huge capacitors, electronic components, antennas, hardware, strange military stuff, hydraulics, pneumatics, you name it.

This is probably the best place to find weird surplus electronics junk in all of California, now that most of the Silicon Valley greats are gone or closed to walk-in customers.

We budgeted an hour here and could have spent all day.  I would budget at least 2-3 hours or you won’t get to explore the whole store.

Need some decomissioned rocket launchers?  You’ll find them here.

More photos of Apex on flickr.

Their website has some awesome Quicktime VR panoramas and extreme wide angle photos, like this one:

Aisle after aisle of surplus equipment @ Apex Electronics

Last year I posted about how surplus electronics junk is getting harder and harder to find in Silicon Valley.  Apex Electronics reminds me of RA Enterprises circa 1995 – mountains of electronics equipment waiting for someone to take home and turn into something new.

We didn’t get a chance to visit all of the places we wanted to thanks to LA’s signature traffic jams.  Next time I’m back I hope to find some new surplus goldmines and report back.

Suggestions?

Do you know of a place to find cool electronics junk in your area?

I know that the number of stores like Apex and All Electronics are dwindling as eBay and Digi-key take over.

Post in the comments and together we can try to keep these rare stores alive!

Earlier this year, there was an announcement that HSC was moving because their landlord would not renew the lease on the building they have occupied for the past 15-20 years.  At the last minute they were able to negotiate a lease for half of their original space, forcing them to vacate what was previously the warehouse/mail order side of the building.

So far, the evidence of these changes to their customers has been very limited.  Maybe there were a few extra items at the annual sidewalk sale and some extra bins of parts on the showroom floor, but overall things looked pretty much the same – until my most recent visit.

Now there is a new HSC Clearance Annex open to the public in what was formerly the employees-only warehouse space:

I found some neat things inside: IEC line filters, variable inductors, an assortment of crystal oscillators, bags of PCB mount right angle RCA jacks.  Most items are $1-2 and many come in bags of 10-100 for that price.

They also had huge boxes of assorted hardware and electrolytic capacitors – you can create your own grab bag for $1.  Usually these are only available during the sidewalk sales and are a surprisingly popular attraction:

If you’re in the area, HSC might be worth a visit.  HSC is located at 3500 Ryder Street, Santa Clara, California 95051.

I also recommend a side trip to Weird Stuff and Fry’s Electronics, both are within a few miles of HSC.  Stop at all three and you are pretty much guaranteed to satisfy your appetite for electronics.

Bins of ICs at Excess Solutions

Last Monday I went on a surplus run in the South Bay.

This was a common pastime for myself and a few especially geeky friends around 1994-2002. After that, eBay and mail order electronics pretty much took over, forcing the most interesting surplus electronics stores in Silicon Valley (ie. RA Enterprises) to close their doors.  With the news that HSC Electronics is moving to an undisclosed location and Triangle Machine is going out of business, I was starting to worry that the days of finding cheap, local electronics surplus were over.

However, thanks to this guide I discovered a few new surplus goldmines:

• Excess Solutions in Milpitas (their site is here) – lots of mechanical parts, connectors, as well as ICs and components.
• Advanced Component Electronics (ACE) in San Jose – a jawdropping inventory of logic ICs, resistors, capacitors, and miscellaneous through hole and surface mount parts.

So maybe electronics surplus is still alive in Silicon Valley.  Both stores are a bit of a drive from the city, but both are still open to foot traffic and appear to have almost every component you could possibly need for an electronics project.  What I did find lacking at both locations was cheap surplus equipment.  One of the most rewarding things for me in the past has been taking apart mysterious equipment to collect interesting bits and pieces for my junk box.  Triangle Machine still has some, but may only be around through the end of August.  Regardless, I will definitely be making the trip back to the South Bay for some electronics scrounging soon, whether HSC sticks around or not.