24 ms·

Weirdstuff Warehouse is closed

213 points by kevbin 9y ago

ada1981 9y ago
I never knew about these guys, what did they sell.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- chadbennett 9y ago
  https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://weirdstuff.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://weirdstuff.com/
- aperrien 9y ago
  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.
- Aloha 9y ago
  They were a surplus store - one of the last in the bay area to go.
- tiredwired 9y ago
  I bought a vintage Apple /// there about 5 few years ago. Still works.
bifrost 9y ago
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.
- aperrien 9y ago
  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.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
Firerouge 9y ago
Weirdstuff is a pretty great trademark and domain. Any ideas on what a business identity like that might sell for?
- Prefinem 9y ago
  I am also interested in knowing. Seeing as it's been a business and had a trademark, I would assume 6 figures, but I honestly have no clue.
Aloha 9y ago
This is a sad day. I'm sad to see them go.
Hansenq 9y ago
Great Thread (with pictures) of what this warehouse used to sell: https://twitter.com/drahardja/status/982872448906346496 https://twitter.com/drahardja/status/982872448906346496
- philfrasty 9y ago
  damn those iomega jaz & zip drives bring back memories...thanks for sharing
  - samstave 9y ago
    Heh, I’ve left quite a number of Jaz and Zip drives at weirdstuff!
  - colordrops 9y ago
    bad memories... they were never reliable for me. click of death etc
    - codazoda 9y ago
      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.
      - 9y ago
rwz 9y ago
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. :(
cfadvan 9y ago
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.
MentallyRetired 9y ago
Who?
raintrees 9y ago
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...
JKCalhoun 9y ago
Oh wow, I'm sad. 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.
- Aloha 9y ago
  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.
  - electricslpnsld 9y ago
    > one of the few constants in California is change Unless it is property taxes.
    - ashelmire 9y ago
      And let's not forget property prices.
      - icantdrive55 9y ago
        And 99.99% of rent. "Let's repeal Prop 13, and I'll have my modern apartment at a reasonable rent? Hell I'll be able to buy a house before that Chinese REIT buys it up? And those guys wouldn't waste the new revenue? Oh no! College will be free. I still wonder why that old man wrote, I'm Mad as Hell, years ago? Why were they so mad?" (I see the misplaced anger, and cringe. It's no wonder the wealthy own everything, rent control is a bad thing, unions are a bad thing, and most of tech will be looking for a bathroom to use in a few months. Sorry, but the projection is getting thick.)
apotheothesomai 9y ago
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.
dangrossman 9y ago
"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."
- shard972 9y ago
  I guess I can do without Weirdstuff for a few more youtube censors.
salqadri 9y ago
Reminds me of when the Santa Clara MicroCenter closed down. The times they are a changin'.
- jrnichols 9y ago
  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.
AceJohnny2 9y ago
Coincidentally, this Saturday will be the Electronics Flea Market at Fry's Sunnyvale, nearby: https://www.evilmadscientist.com/2018/electronics-flea-market-now-in-sunnyvale/ https://www.evilmadscientist.com/2018/electronics-flea-marke...
- russellbeattie 9y ago
  "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...
  - VectorLock 9y ago
    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.
  - SwellJoe 9y ago
    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.
  - PeterMikhailov 9y ago
    some vendors show up later in the morning
  - newnewpdro 9y ago
    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.
  - itomato 9y ago
    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.
ChuckMcM 9y ago
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).
Biker_27 9y ago
Passing of an icon.
tzs 9y ago
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.
- sp_nster 9y ago
  ^Probably a large #9 and a Pepsi
- DrScump 9y ago
  St. John's is, and was, the better lunch choice there. And that same building housed Ham Radio Outlet for decades.
alanpost 9y ago
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.
chheplo 9y ago
Wow.. This is sad.
calebio 9y ago
Any suggestions of similar places on the Bay Area to visit/shop? Just went to my first Fry's a few weeks ago!
- bittercynic 9y ago
  Halted Electronics is pretty fun to visit. On Corvin and Central Expressway in Santa Clara, a little bit east of Lawrence Expressway.
- uxp100 9y ago
  Go to the Electronics flea put on by the Hams. Monthly on Saturday mornings.
  - davewongillies 9y ago
    Which is on this Saturday in the Fry's carpark in Sunnyvale! https://www.electronicsfleamarket.com/ https://www.electronicsfleamarket.com/
kabdib 9y ago
It was fun to see products that I helped ship wind up on the shelves at Weird Stuff. Kind of a sideways honor . . .
- jhpankow 9y ago
  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.
catilac 9y ago
This is a total bummer. I remember when my dad took me here on the weekends.
wiseleo 9y ago
No! My favorite place :(
asteli 9y ago
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.
- natch 9y ago
  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.
  - mhb 9y ago
    Nice, on-line place for optical stuff: https://www.surplusshed.com/ https://www.surplusshed.com/
    - natch 9y ago
      Wow, looks like a great source! Thanks.
jdblair 9y ago
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.
- JoeAltmaier 9y ago
  Then you see it in the Silicon Valley Museum of Technology - what does that make you?
  - jdblair 9y ago
    Arrived.
cardamomo 9y ago
Not the same, but equally weird: American Science and Surplus (https://www.sciplus.com 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.
- uxp100 9y ago
  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.
weirdstuff 9y ago
Well, it was a good run.
russellbeattie 9y ago
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!
ndesaulniers 9y ago
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.
tzakrajs 9y ago
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.
vitno 9y ago
This makes me really sad. This place was invaluable when hacking on old hardware, it was a true institution of Silicon Valley.
VectorLock 9y ago
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. :(
SwellJoe 9y ago
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".)
- PeterMikhailov 9y ago
  https://surveillancevalley.com/ https://surveillancevalley.com/
- packetslave 9y ago
  user: SwellJoe created: February 19, 2007 karma: 30776 about: Email is swelljoe@gmail.com Nice to see you're doing your part...
  - SwellJoe 9y ago
    I can't figure out what you're implying.
    - gwilkes 9y ago
      It's not clear but I think he's saying because you use gmail you are contributing one to these surveillance companies.
      - packetslave 9y ago
        Not that it matters since this was flagged to death, but it's amusingly hypocritical to talk about "Private Surveillance Valley" (not-so-subtly referring to Google in this particular thread) and yet go on using an @gmail.com address. Either stop using the free services, or stop bitching about the "surveillance"
jcoffland 9y ago
Sad to see this go. For those in the Bay looking for surplus electronics there's still: * http://anchor-electronics.com http://anchor-electronics.com * http://www.excesssolutions.com http://www.excesssolutions.com * http://www.halted.com http://www.halted.com
mikejmoffitt 9y ago
It was sad to hear the fifteen minute warning on the intercom and to watch Gary lock up front for the last time.
grassclone 9y ago
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!
gumby 9y ago
Always a fun place to buy back something you'd worked on previously!
itworker7 9y ago
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.
mikx007 9y ago
If you live in IL, check out Han's System. They sort of have the same look and feel as wierdstuff warehouse.
bcaulfield 9y ago
Nooooooooooooooooooooo
rbanffy 9y ago
Eventually, weird stuff will appear here: http://stores.ebay.com/Outback-Equipment-Company http://stores.ebay.com/Outback-Equipment-Company I hope they can, at least, ship stuff over here.
aurizon 9y ago
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) ...
emh68 9y ago
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.
- happycube 9y ago
  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 ;)

213 points by kevbin 9y ago

ada1981 9y ago

I never knew about these guys, what did they sell.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
chadbennett 9y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://weirdstuff.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://weirdstuff.com/
aperrien 9y ago
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.
Aloha 9y ago
They were a surplus store - one of the last in the bay area to go.
tiredwired 9y ago
I bought a vintage Apple /// there about 5 few years ago. Still works.

bifrost 9y ago

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.

aperrien 9y ago
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.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

Firerouge 9y ago

Weirdstuff is a pretty great trademark and domain. Any ideas on what a business identity like that might sell for?

Prefinem 9y ago
I am also interested in knowing. Seeing as it's been a business and had a trademark, I would assume 6 figures, but I honestly have no clue.

Aloha 9y ago

This is a sad day. I'm sad to see them go.

Hansenq 9y ago

Great Thread (with pictures) of what this warehouse used to sell: https://twitter.com/drahardja/status/982872448906346496 https://twitter.com/drahardja/status/982872448906346496

philfrasty 9y ago
damn those iomega jaz & zip drives bring back memories...thanks for sharing
- samstave 9y ago
  Heh, I’ve left quite a number of Jaz and Zip drives at weirdstuff!
- colordrops 9y ago
  bad memories... they were never reliable for me. click of death etc
  - codazoda 9y ago
    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.
    - 9y ago

rwz 9y ago

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. :(

cfadvan 9y ago

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.

MentallyRetired 9y ago

Who?

raintrees 9y ago

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...

JKCalhoun 9y ago

Oh wow, I'm sad. 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.

Aloha 9y ago
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.
- electricslpnsld 9y ago
  > one of the few constants in California is change Unless it is property taxes.
  - ashelmire 9y ago
    And let's not forget property prices.
    - icantdrive55 9y ago
      And 99.99% of rent. "Let's repeal Prop 13, and I'll have my modern apartment at a reasonable rent? Hell I'll be able to buy a house before that Chinese REIT buys it up? And those guys wouldn't waste the new revenue? Oh no! College will be free. I still wonder why that old man wrote, I'm Mad as Hell, years ago? Why were they so mad?" (I see the misplaced anger, and cringe. It's no wonder the wealthy own everything, rent control is a bad thing, unions are a bad thing, and most of tech will be looking for a bathroom to use in a few months. Sorry, but the projection is getting thick.)

apotheothesomai 9y ago

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.

dangrossman 9y ago

"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."

shard972 9y ago
I guess I can do without Weirdstuff for a few more youtube censors.

salqadri 9y ago

Reminds me of when the Santa Clara MicroCenter closed down. The times they are a changin'.

jrnichols 9y ago
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.

AceJohnny2 9y ago

Coincidentally, this Saturday will be the Electronics Flea Market at Fry's Sunnyvale, nearby: https://www.evilmadscientist.com/2018/electronics-flea-market-now-in-sunnyvale/ https://www.evilmadscientist.com/2018/electronics-flea-marke...

russellbeattie 9y ago
"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...
- VectorLock 9y ago
  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.
- SwellJoe 9y ago
  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.
- PeterMikhailov 9y ago
  some vendors show up later in the morning
- newnewpdro 9y ago
  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.
- itomato 9y ago
  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.

ChuckMcM 9y ago

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).

Biker_27 9y ago

Passing of an icon.

tzs 9y ago

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.

sp_nster 9y ago
^Probably a large #9 and a Pepsi
DrScump 9y ago
St. John's is, and was, the better lunch choice there. And that same building housed Ham Radio Outlet for decades.

alanpost 9y ago

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.

chheplo 9y ago

Wow.. This is sad.

calebio 9y ago

Any suggestions of similar places on the Bay Area to visit/shop? Just went to my first Fry's a few weeks ago!

bittercynic 9y ago
Halted Electronics is pretty fun to visit. On Corvin and Central Expressway in Santa Clara, a little bit east of Lawrence Expressway.
uxp100 9y ago
Go to the Electronics flea put on by the Hams. Monthly on Saturday mornings.
- davewongillies 9y ago
  Which is on this Saturday in the Fry's carpark in Sunnyvale! https://www.electronicsfleamarket.com/ https://www.electronicsfleamarket.com/

kabdib 9y ago

It was fun to see products that I helped ship wind up on the shelves at Weird Stuff. Kind of a sideways honor . . .

jhpankow 9y ago
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.

catilac 9y ago

This is a total bummer. I remember when my dad took me here on the weekends.

wiseleo 9y ago

No! My favorite place :(

asteli 9y ago

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.

natch 9y ago
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.
- mhb 9y ago
  Nice, on-line place for optical stuff: https://www.surplusshed.com/ https://www.surplusshed.com/
  - natch 9y ago
    Wow, looks like a great source! Thanks.

jdblair 9y ago

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.

JoeAltmaier 9y ago
Then you see it in the Silicon Valley Museum of Technology - what does that make you?
- jdblair 9y ago
  Arrived.

cardamomo 9y ago

Not the same, but equally weird: American Science and Surplus (https://www.sciplus.com 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.

uxp100 9y ago
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.

weirdstuff 9y ago

Well, it was a good run.

russellbeattie 9y ago

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!

ndesaulniers 9y ago

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.

tzakrajs 9y ago

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.

vitno 9y ago

This makes me really sad. This place was invaluable when hacking on old hardware, it was a true institution of Silicon Valley.

VectorLock 9y ago

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. :(

SwellJoe 9y ago

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".)

PeterMikhailov 9y ago
https://surveillancevalley.com/ https://surveillancevalley.com/
packetslave 9y ago
user: SwellJoe created: February 19, 2007 karma: 30776 about: Email is swelljoe@gmail.com Nice to see you're doing your part...
- SwellJoe 9y ago
  I can't figure out what you're implying.
  - gwilkes 9y ago
    It's not clear but I think he's saying because you use gmail you are contributing one to these surveillance companies.
    - packetslave 9y ago
      Not that it matters since this was flagged to death, but it's amusingly hypocritical to talk about "Private Surveillance Valley" (not-so-subtly referring to Google in this particular thread) and yet go on using an @gmail.com address. Either stop using the free services, or stop bitching about the "surveillance"

jcoffland 9y ago

Sad to see this go. For those in the Bay looking for surplus electronics there's still: * http://anchor-electronics.com http://anchor-electronics.com * http://www.excesssolutions.com http://www.excesssolutions.com * http://www.halted.com http://www.halted.com

mikejmoffitt 9y ago

It was sad to hear the fifteen minute warning on the intercom and to watch Gary lock up front for the last time.

grassclone 9y ago

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!

gumby 9y ago

Always a fun place to buy back something you'd worked on previously!

itworker7 9y ago

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.

mikx007 9y ago

If you live in IL, check out Han's System. They sort of have the same look and feel as wierdstuff warehouse.

bcaulfield 9y ago

Nooooooooooooooooooooo

rbanffy 9y ago

Eventually, weird stuff will appear here: http://stores.ebay.com/Outback-Equipment-Company http://stores.ebay.com/Outback-Equipment-Company I hope they can, at least, ship stuff over here.

aurizon 9y ago

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) ...

emh68 9y ago

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.

happycube 9y ago
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 ;)