everything moved towards surface mount components. These are a lot harder to work with than the through hole parts. Then a lot of manufacturing went to Japan/Ko

everything moved towards surface mount components. These are a lot harder to work with than the through hole parts. Then a lot of manufacturing went to Japan/Korea/Taiwan and latterly to China. A quirk of US tax law said 'parts in inventory are carried at cost' and not depreciated. If you want to write them off, you must sell them. This meant that a company making 500,000 widgets, who had a bad sale year may end up with parts to make 50,000 widgets. The next year's design differs = parts useless to them = sold off cheap to used parts dealers(called 'surplus' = 100% good new parts), like Radio SHack and many others = lots of stuff. Now this business has collapse and you can only buy parts cheap on Ali-express, Ebay. New parts from Digikey are readily available in small/large amounts at the normal price. The best remnant in places like hacklab.to = a hackerspace with tools and 3D printers etc. Many libraries now put hacker spaces and internet cafes where they once dealt with books