Gregory's Serverso i did something totally insane. the local electronics store was closing down and so i (and two friends) purchased THEIR ENTIRE STOCK OF INTEGRATED CIRCUITS. and today i finally finished organizing my share into these 12 cabinets. 🧵
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a couple of statistics: there are 3,622 different part numbers and a total of 72,108 parts in this collection. (before being split, this means there were over 216,000 parts that we had to sort through manually!) these parts started out at HSC Electronics (aka Halted) in Santa Clara and were collected over a period of 40 years. HSC was on Ryder street for many, many years, but they had to move in ~2016. the building was demolished in May 2017. HSC/Halted has had several other locations over the years, but served as a steady source of parts for hobbyists and engineers. many famous individuals bought things here. this was great for a while, but on July 16, 2022, Excess Solutions opened their doors to the public for the last time. and on that day, I decided to get myself a guaranteed supply of chips, and two of my friends were totally down for it. we ended moving 80 cabinets -- containing 4,000 plastic drawers, to an undisclosed location where we could slowly pick through the collection, catalog it, and separate it out three ways. after separating out my share of the parts, i stuffed them into thousands of plastic ESD-safe bags, each labeled with a sharpie and stored in a moving box. over the last few months, i spent hours and hours carefully packing chips into separate drawers. by putting multiple part numbers into a single drawer, i was able to reduce it down to just 12 cabinets. if you've been wondering why i haven't been posting as prolifically this year, this is the major reason. OK some answers to questions you might have: * i don't want to run an electronics business so i'm not planning to sell any. doesn't mean i won't give parts to friends occasionally. * yes, i have a catalog of parts organized in a spreadsheet, which makes it much easier to find things * yes, many of the drawers (for MOS parts) have ESD protection in the form of an aluminum foil layer. i applied it with glue and this custom 3D-printed jig. HSC originally used black ESD foam which degraded horribly over the years. i hate that stuff. i hate the sour smell it gets when it degrades, and i hated having to pick hundreds of chips out of crumbling, decaying foam. * rarest part i found? probably these 4004 processor chips. but there were other oddities in the collection, shift register memories, drivers, and that sort of thing.
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@carpetbomberz yeah they're neat but were state of the art for only a short time so nobody remembers them @tubetime I bet there’s a bunch of nerds losing their shit over this right now.  @tubetime This is amazing. I had been hoping someone that would take care of them got all the good stuff :)  @tubetime Could I apply for some 1 bit SRAM with separate Din and Dout lines? @tubetime I dont know, I always wanted to make a digital delay out of one, could never find one of the static ram chips with separate IO lines. funny story, i loaned some parts in the 4000 series (support chips) to a friend of mine who ended up building a SUPER COOL PROJECT with them. like -- mind blowingly cool. keep an eye out for 4004-related news.  @tubetime I know you didn't ask, but I am not crazy about aluminum foil for ESD protection. You don't want high conductivity, you want low (but non-zero) conductivity. That's what the black foam was doing, before it died of old age.  @tubetime did you find any chips damaged by that foam? I've heard it's slightly acidic so it can damage them over the long term  @tubetime @tubetime happy they didn’t just get trashed. To me HSC and the like were the last vestiges of the Silicon Valley that I remember. Where else could I go over lunch with a friend and have random guessing discussions about what this or that machine does? @RebelbotJen yes! the guy was going to toss all the parts and sell the cabinets. @tubetime I really want to know what you have - I don't have a good reason for it, just curious.  @tubetime @Cdespinosa is there anyplace left? WeirdStuff, Halted/HSC, Excess Solutions, Disk Drive Depot, Fry’s???     @timjclevenger no in this case, chased out of their old building by Amazon, and then lasted in the new place only a year before the landlord doubled their rent.   @tubetime That is either wonderful or very frightening (perhaps both) @tubetime I have absolutely no idea what one does with this massive collection that you have (frankly, I don’t want to know…not a tech savvy cell in my body). But, I am so impressed by your commitment to this massive undertaking! I sure hope your friends and anyone else you help with these chips appreciate you!!! GOOD JOB!!!  @tubetime This reminds me of something similar Adam Savage recently did with parts from an ILM model shop. Just bought everything. I’m not sure where he hangs out now on social media, but you should totally share this story with him.   @tubetime Those pink and blue antistatic bags also have limited lifetime, generally rated at one year. The polyethylene they're made from lasts as long as any other but their antistat properties fade in a few years at most. The silvery gray bags retain their properties for 2 years or more, are more conductive and suitable as shielding, but they cost a lot more and are hard to see through. The opaque black ones are rated to last 5 years. Awesome collection. Long may it live.   @tubetime Absolute legend stuff there - never thought of buying out the local RadioShack when it closed years ago.  Jealousy is the wrong emotion to feel over this... ...but it's not my good nature that makes me not be jealous, I could not fit it in my lab.  @tubetime I am curious to know if you have some Signetics 2519 shift registers in that collection? There are a few Apple 1 enthusiasts who would be interested (including myself). |
@tubetime Oh no - which store has closed now?