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Electronics Flea Market
- bittercynic 5y agoThe Electronics Flea Market is finally back!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- genericone 5y agoDidn't know about this, thanks for informing those of us in the sf bay area.
- bigyikes 5y agoI moved from Sunnyvale, CA to Austin, TX last year. I don’t miss much, but I sure am sad to be missing out on this!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Jaydon564 5y ago[flagged]
- watersb 5y agoVery fond memories of the Foothill College Swap Meet. With that and Weird Stuff Warehouse, I was able to put together a complete TRS-80 Color Computer rig in a matter of hours. The cassette recorder cable was a particularly nice find.
- jeffwass 5y agoFor those in the Boston area, the next SwapFest is on 17th April at MIT : https://w1mx.mit.edu/flea-at-mit/ https://w1mx.mit.edu/flea-at-mit/
- gregallan 5y agoFirst one since 2019! But it’s back on the normal monthly schedule for the 2022 Spring-Fall season.
- sbrorson 5y agoAs long as we're listing electronics flea markets nationwide, I might as well mention the grand-daddy of them all, the Dayton Hamvention: https://hamvention.org/ https://hamvention.org/
- gregfjohnson 5y agoFor those in Southern California, the legendary W6TRW swap meet is up and running again. As always, last Saturday of the month, 7am until 11:30am. It’s in Redondo Beach. Brilliant nerdy stuff from every decade from the 40’s to the present. A fair amount of tacky stuff, but a lot of hidden gems also.
- dickfickling 5y agoDoes anyone know of a good NYC analog for this?
- charcircuit 5y agoEbay?
- sbrorson 5y agoI don't know about these days, but back in the 1980s there were a number of electronics surplus stores located on Canal St, below SoHo. I used to pop in now and then to buy stuff. They were part of a larger ecosystem of industrial supply stores left over from the days when SoHo was a factory district. Sadly, the last time I was down there no electronics stores remained.
- mxuribe 5y agoThere used to be some sort of frequent "Expo" - which was more of a flea market to me - that took place in Secaucus, NJ...and i bought plenty of components and a PC computer or two there back in the early 2000s. Nowadays, i just assume there isn't anything like that and just look for stuff on ebay, craigslist, used/refurbished sections of newegg, amazon, etc.
- AndrewUnmuted 5y agoBest one I know of that might still be operating is Hall of Science Amateur Radio Club[0]... [0] https://www.hosarc.org/ https://www.hosarc.org/
- 5y ago
- blueflow 5y agoMost electronics are pretty useless without documentation/datasheets. Some components might be self-explanatory from their inscriptions, like capacitors or resistors, but with undocumented semiconductors its instant game-over. Worst case are ASICs in epoxy resin...
- uxp100 5y agoI haven’t been to this flea in about 5 years, but this is a flea run by a ham club, not like some mysterious unlabeled chips in a shenzhen alley. Plenty of old (10 years) computers, some very old (40 years) computers, radios (vintage AM receivers), radios (amateur radio), loose tubes of common varieties, test equipment, military surplus, misc cheap junk (bad bicycle lights), guitar amps, and a few electronics components (most commonly higher power LEDs on boards IIRC)
- kregasaurusrex 5y agoThese types of meetings are more targeted towards electronics whose primary functions aren't governed by software- think like an oscilloscope that runs directly off of a series of chips instead of modern ones composed of an fully virtual stack on top of an operating system. So long as said components fall within reasonable specs (analog is typically much more forgiving than digital) and chips replaced with facsimiles these units can have a second life.
- blueflow 5y agoThis problem is not specific to software-related items. You can't really use an transistor if you don't know its polarity, pin out, amplification curves and current limits...
- beej71 5y agoI haven't lived in SV since 1993, but things like this sure make me miss it.
- JKCalhoun 5y agoMoved there in 1995 and it was amazing. Sadly, it got less amazing as the decades marched on and Silicon Valley became Web Valley (now Social Valley?). Those days: Computer Literacy bookstore, Disk Drive Depot... Fry's went mainstream and then faded, Weirdstuff gone, Haltek, several other surplus stores gone whose names escape me. The Saturday crawl from one surplus store to another across Mountain View and Sunnyvale used to be worth getting up early for.
- lost_soul 5y agoThere was Halted and that place in San Carlos that sold things like surplus metal subassemblies.
- snarfy 5y agoIf you like to buy electronics by the pound, this is the best deal.
- stevespang 5y ago
- controversial97 5y agoFor people in the UK who would like something similar: Dunstable Downs Radio Boot Sale, 22nd of May 2022, Luton http://www.ddrcbootsale.org/ http://www.ddrcbootsale.org/
- pdx6 5y agoThis is great! I have a garage full of old gear that I don’t want to put in the landfill but it is still worth a few dollars. Wish I had heard of this earlier this week to make it.
- jrmg 5y agoAll being well there’ll be another one next month!
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago"New hours are from 7:00AM until 12:00 Noon" seems like a really poor choice of time. I know plenty of people who are into electronics who'd be more likely to show up if this was from midnight to 5 am (not suggesting that that would be a good time, just that this time seems absurd when you're targeting geeks and maybe extending it into the afternoon would be a good idea).
- prova_modena 5y agoI have no experience with this event, but it's sort of common in amateur radio communities that events are scheduled around typical retiree hours (think "early bird special"). It can make it difficult for younger working people to attend, and given the legendary cliquishness of some of those communities it may be intentional. Again I know nothing about this specific event or the organizers so I'm not pointing fingers.
- jrmg 5y agoThe ‘old hours’ had an informal start at around 5AM!
- heuermh 5y agoAs good a thread as any in which to post this, anyone else with a basement full of electronics parts interested in federating a web store for one-offs and interesting finds? I have acquired plenty of cool stuff, but nothing in significant enough quantities to make it as an electronics supplier. I'm thinking more curated antique store vibe.