Electronics Store in Bay Area

Heven't been there in a while, but these guys used to be pretty good...

and

Nowadays, it's easier to buy from Digikey and Mouser, rather than drive an hour each way down the peninsula.

A lot of the good joints... Haltek, Mike Quinn, the ones on Market Street, the one in Oakland, are gone.

Weird Stuff Warehouse is probably still around, but it's mostly computer junk.

Where are you located?

John

I never heard of R&D, well at least as a store.;-) Try Excess Solutions

I would use caution buying from them on-line since often the bins are mislabeled. For instance, every connector is a SMA if it is tiny.

Halted supposedly has moved, but this is not reflected on the website

I'm told Anchor still exists.

The only store I routinely use is Excess Solutions. Otherwise, I just buy on the net.

Alltronics moved years ago to Morgan Hill. That is out of the bay area as far as I am concerned. ;-)

Weirdstuff is pretty much a waste of time. I check it out maybe twice a year. Pretty much Excess Solutions is the only place I use for components. They have a great selection of electronics hardware (nuts, screws, standoffs, etc).

Poking around Mike Quinn's was an experience. I still have a few "front panels" I bought there that had multi-turn trip pots with high res indicators. Thanks to cheap dacs, you just can't get mutiturn trimpots like that anymore. [The last time I was in Excess Solutions, they had a few scrap "front panels" with cool switches, but no high res trimpots.] Quinn would get stuff from biomedical firms, so the switches and stuff were top notch.

Missing from that surplus memorial page is RA, the late Richard Arn's (sp) store. He had two locations over the years, maybe three. Richard had a nasty temper, but at times you would get good deals from him. I recall once going to RA with a group of geeks. A friend found a meter, asked Richard what he wanted for it, didn't like the price, and Richard said something like "just leave it here." We left the store, walked to the car, and heard a crash nearby. It turns out Richard decided to heave the meter at us. We left it since the meter was now all smashed to bits. I have a few instruments I bought from RA over the years. The deals got pretty poor once ebay was born.

R&D was different than the other places you mentioned. It was a retail store that sold only new stuff, not mostly surplus stuff like the others. It was originally on Abel street in Milpitas and later moved to Montague.

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They're still at their old location at Lawrence and Central. There's a sign posted just inside the door announcing a move at "the end of the year", but it's not dated so I'm not sure they mean 2008 or meant 2007 or earlier.

If you get desperate, there's always Fry's.

John

Anchor is still there, and their folks are helpful and know what they have in stock. Only open until 2pm on Saturday.

--
Namaste--

Also, they don't have a retail store any more! I don't know about will-call.

It's not good for components, but they have a well organized collection of cables. Also, if you need a project box, you can often find a random piece of equipment for $5-10 that will serve the purpose.

Richard Anderson. He was indeed quite a character.

Other walk-in/will-call stores for components:

Advanced Component Electronics (ACE), San Jose

Jameco, Belmont

Note that they have parts available for will-call that aren't on their web site - weird.

JDR Microdevices, Sunnyvale

On Sun, 31 Aug 2008 09:11:02 -0700, in sci.electronics.design, John Larkin bloviated:

You miss this part: "Fry's has a dismal selection"