Another Surplus Store Gone

So they had a big auction, eh? I bet there were some real bargains there.

Or were they bought out by an even bigger surplus store coming to the area.

I seem to recall there used to be various army surplus stores that coalesced into a much fewer number of surplus stores that weren't really selling surplus at all. Then they were run out of business by the big box sports stores.

If this trend continues indefinitely, all the big box stores will be taken over by a single big box store, either Costco or Walmart. Who will it be?

--

  Rick C. 

  - Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging 
  - Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

They were electronic and industrial surplus. They were one of the biggest i n the world. They bought entire factories, like when NCR stopped production of mechanical cash registers. They bought the inventory and tooling when R L Drake stopped building Amateur radio equipment in the United States. The y had a pair of Cincinnati Milicron robots from s GM auto plant. Used AC mo tors into hundreds of HP. It was no Army surplus store. It was the first st op when looking for industrial parts and tooling before the internet. You h ave no idea what it was like. It was better stocked than any wholesaler in the region. It was started by their dad at the end of WW II. He bought the remaining inventory from terminated contracts as well as at the docks when our warships returned from Europe. The two sons are in their 80s if they ar e still alive. They also diversified into the alarm business. The top seven th floor was a half city block where they monitored thousands of alarm syst ems. It was reported that they did over 100 million dollars in sales one ye ar, in the '80s.

Not surprised they're gone. All those surplus places seemed really stuck in the past. No websites, of if they even had them, terrible or no photos, mysterious shipping prices etc.

We still have one place in Chicago, but it's just been a toy store for the past 2 decades. All the little manufacturers in the area are elsewhere now, or just pitch "stuff" in the dumpster vs. selling it to anybody else. MBA logic and all. Some of the stuff they sell is real dubious too, like parted out medical equipment. Yeah, I want an air pump with hepatitis in it.

AX Man Surplus in Minneapolis still has electrical/electronic/mechanical stuff, likely from all the electronics companies in that general area.

Surplus Sales, formerly in Omaha used to be open to the public and had some interesting stuff, but everything was way overpriced. Their current website is pure trash and doesn't do justice for the junk they've hoarded over the years. They have some great stuff, but only the weird owner knows the details, and it's not listed for sale. I think they're the biggest player in collecting shut down businesses at this point.

WHile it's fun to browse random junk in a store, the fact is you can get whatever you want on ebay, and ebay has photos and descriptions of products, a concept that just doesn't ring the most of the surplus operations that are left.

Take this random example

Amazing close-up shot of the connector. No real information on the "threaded shaft", which is sort of the key thing about this assembly.

Or this

That "Bodine Synchronous Projector" motor sure looks cool. Let me click on the photo. Yup, a worthless blurry photo and no shots of the nameplate.

I guess I could always fax them a request for more information though.

They had a website and the sold on Ebay. The website was meci.com. they weren't overpriced, or they wouldn't have lasted 75years.

I think Fair Radio Sales in Lima OH is still aliive. Maybe not for long though. I have bought lots of Mil surplus stuff from them.

--
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. 
https://www.avast.com/antivirus

I used to love the junk stores. There were tons of them. Halted, Haltek, Mike Quinn, Weird Stuff Warehouse. And the Foothill Flea Market was fabulous. Pease, Williams, Alfke would be there.

When I was a kid I spent all my allowance ordering surplus stuff from Fair Radio Sales. I think they are still in business.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

Science teaches us to doubt. 

  Claude Bernard

I bought a 4FP7 CRT from them when I was a kid, a WWII radar display tube. I recently emailed them, and they still have some! I got one just for fun. It glows in the dark.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

Science teaches us to doubt. 

  Claude Bernard

There was a place on El Camino in Mountain View or maybe Palo Alto when I was in grad school, run by a guy with the greenest teeth I ever saw.

I got a bunch of 2N918s that I occasionally still use, as well as a bunch of other stuff. I remember he had a barrel full of 'patented noisy fans'--substandard-grade equipment pulls, but very cheap.

Now I can get 40 GHz NPNs with betas of 500 and 1 kV Early voltage for

16 cents. :)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

http://electrooptical.net 
http://hobbs-eo.com

I remember that one, on El Camino. I got my 200 amp filament transformer there. They were near Eimac and had a lot of tubes too.

Halted had a dusty bin full of tunnel diodes. They didn't know what they were and wanted 10 cents each. I got a bunch. Should have made an offer for the whole bin.

But the combination of super-cheap new parts and equipment, and super expensive real estate, killed them off. There are probably few customers left too; all the kids want to do is type code.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

Science teaches us to doubt. 

  Claude Bernard

You'd probably still be tripping over it. ;)

The early-1960s Ge tunnel diodes all had ~200 pF capacitance. You needed the ones with 200 mA peak current to get decent speed, and a gizmo with many of those is going to get toasty. (Of course they were competing with tubes.) ;)

Dunno. Maybe they can't decide whether they're HW or SW types. ;)

Simon's in that camp too.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

http://electrooptical.net 
http://hobbs-eo.com

Some had switching rise times around 25 ps. In those days, nothing else came close except maybe streak tubes. The fabrication process for TDs was insane.

My senior EE project was "The Tunnel Diode Slideback Sampling Oscilloscope", basically a fast 1-bit digitizer with feedback. I won some silly IEEE award for that and had to read the paper to a bunch of old fogies at a dinner.

Boff at HP accidentally discovered the SRD, I think roughly 1960, and then we had fast sampling scopes.

Being able to do both is cool. Almost mandatory.

The Brat wants to learn to code now. She's signed up for an expensive online Python course from some college. After she gets into it a bit, I'm going to explain finite state machines to her. Maybe a company lecture.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

Science teaches us to doubt. 

  Claude Bernard

torsdag den 16. juli 2020 kl. 18.49.38 UTC+2 skrev snipped-for-privacy@highlandsniptechnology.com:

apart from a few small niches it you not going very far with out software these days

A company like Sparkfun has managed to grow to 140 employees selling componets, kits, breadboards etc. to kids (old and young) playing with electronics and code

Mags is doing her BSEE part time while laying out boards for Cirrus Logic and is enjoying learning Python. I'll have to learn it myself pretty soon I think--it's getting harder to stick with Rexx, dear to my heart as it is. There are just too many Python libraries that make life easier.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

http://electrooptical.net 
http://hobbs-eo.com

When you say it glows in the dark I hope you aren't glowing yourself!

I recall when a surplus store in Toronto (1960s) was selling off old foot X-ray machines - originally used in shoe stores!

John ;-#)#

Yes indeed. It baffles me that more people can't slide between hardware and software.

Softies can think FSMs are something to do with parsing in compilers. At that point I realise there is a PEBCAK[1], and I'd rather they stayed away from the K.

I once did a "company lecture" to a group that was building a telecoms project. They were so deep in the shit[2] that most of them hadn't even noticed they were implementing an FSM

[1] Problem exists between chair and keyboard. [2] due to some truly dreadful technology plus dimwitted misuse of standard tools.

The P7 phosphor has a fast blue component that energizes a slow (zinc sulfide?) amber one. If you shine a light on it, it glows with some decay time constant, roughly 30 seconds maybe. Nothing radioactive, although there were surplus radioactive gadgets available when I was a kid.

Those were killers.

Probably badly. It's possible to do a bad FSM in hardware, too.

Stunningly badly, due to a combination of poor tools and cargo-cult use of processes and tools.

Example: if-then-else clauses nested 10 deep.

Example mantra: "code is difficult to change, but configurations are easy to change". That lead to the conditionals in the if clauses being constants defined in a configuration file. Think about that, and weep.

Add those two together, throw in Rational Clearcase source code (but not configuration constants) control, and the result was grim in all respects.

Yes, but it would be difficult to beat the example above!

That sounds more like a logic-driven hairball rather than an actual FSM.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

http://electrooptical.net 
http://hobbs-eo.com