Article: 47937 of ba.general Message-ID: <37253D59.3AFEE2F3@indyramp.com> Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1999 21:30:17 -0700 From: Rob Novak X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en] (Win95; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: ba.general,ba.internet To: Eric Edwards Subject: Re: Computer junkyards in bay area References: <372459DC.13F98A0B@giore.org> <7g2fuk$lbl$1@samba.rahul.net> <7g2r3t$d9n@alumni.EECS.Berkeley.EDU> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 87 NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.157.183.41 X-Trace: nntp1.ba.best.com 925187320 232 209.157.183.41 Path: news1.meer.net!news3.best.com!nntp1.ba.best.com!not-for-mail Xref: news1.meer.net ba.general:47937 ba.internet:40441 Eric Edwards wrote: > > On 26 Apr 1999 15:59:09 -0700, > Kevin A. Hogan wrote: > > When I'm in the mood for random browsing, I've found HSC and RA to be > >far more interesting than WierdStuff (although WierdStuff's web site > >seems to indicate they've expanded recently . . . ) > > One would hope so. All the times that I've been there it has been but a > shadow of thier old store next to Fry's. As mentioned earlier, they moved over to Caribbean in Sunnyvale... if you follow Lawrence away from their old location past Baylands park and the water treatment place, you'll see them across the meridian. And yeah, they've been going downhill since I first went there, which was admittedly after the move. (I would almost drool at the thought of better than when I first went there 2 1/2 years ago) The auction is down to almost nothing--and you can't look very closely at the stuff (bring a flashlight if you want to see anything), and the huge area that used to be the auction is now a lot of the same stuff, except that it doesn't move and it's priced individually. I made a grand run of junk shops this morning/afternoon, so here are some thoughts for those of you looking. These are from a 80s/90s computer person's perspective; a lot of these places have stuff I'd never want but others might have to change clothes after a visit. Curtis Trading/Surplus Stuff (Milpitas, on Milpitas Blvd south of 237/Calaveras): Lots of furniture, a bus, a warehouse worth of "y2k" survival rations and such. They have some old PC bits, terminals, old laptops, motherboards and cards, and occasionally other potentially cool stuff. I'm still not over their pitching a sun 3/280 after I asked them three times to price it for me. Alltronics (San Jose, Zanker Road south of Trimble [i think]): lots of electronics and electrics stuff, a catalog which is worth the drive, monitors, PC cases, out of vogue motherboards and processors (pentium classic) at good prices when they're in stock. No complaints from me. http://www.alltronics.com/ Weird Stuff (Sunnyvale, see above): There are some gems in the as-is section, especially if you're looking for EISA motherboards or rubber gloves. I got a couple of Adaptec 1740 SCSI cards in the $25 as-is system section, and some dells with single-slot dual-floppy units that I really like. Auction is great if you like Mac stuff, other coolness is rare. Sun stuff in the showroom is way overpriced, even for the convenience factor. http://www.weirdstuff.com/ Halted (Sunnyvale, Lawrence and Central Expwys): Lots of parts, cases, old monitors, usually some specials on motherboards or drives, and almost always at least one thing I'd love to buy if I could fit it into my car. Got a Sun 386i/250 there, and lots of little things that are great. Pretty good selection of cables at reasonable prices. Today they had some nice short telco racks that make good combination server racks and end tables, and some fairly heavy UPS-type thingies. No complaints from me... looking forward to this year's annual yard sale, but this year I will not buy a full height rack... I will not buy a full height rack... I will not buy a full height rack. http://www.halted.com/ Action Surplus (Lawrence just west of Central, near St. John's Grill): Probably best for cables and cable adapters. Their as-is no-returns no-warranty policy has not made them greatly popular around here lately, but I just don't buy anything there I'd depend on. They did have some Macs a while back that were brightly labeled "Tested - Good" with some specs, and they disclaimed those markings as "well, we didn't put the stickers on them." Well, I didn't buy them--it's not that hard to peel the stickers off. If you want drives, go past subway to disk drive depot or something. No web page afaict. Software & Stuff (around the building from Action): Newer "junk" like PCI video and sound and other controllers, some cases and barebones PCs, lots of CDs and software. More software than stuff--they did have a good selection of Linux and related packages, and a cool double-wide server case that looked vaguely HP-ish, 'cept for the lack of power supply. Your mileage may vary, of course; these observations are based on my experience only, and as of about noon today all of them were still in business so they should be there tomorrow if you want to drop by. There's a place called Computer Recycling Center, in Santa Clara and Santa Rosa, who apparently do a weekly surplus sale. They provided the monitors for the KTEH auction, so despite their part in pushing Doctor Who and Sunday Night Science Fiction away I'm curious. Anybody been to their sales? http://www.crc.org/surplus.html --Rob