
Weirdstuff Warehouse is closed - kevbin
http://weirdstuff.com/
======
JKCalhoun
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.

~~~
bitwize
For actual electronics it's pretty much Shenzhen or gtfo these days.

~~~
bhouston
Why can these amazing things exist in Shenzhen but not here?

~~~
et-al
Electronics (physical things) require prototyping shops, which require
physical space. Unfortunately land is at a premium in the Bay Area.

As rents rise beyond oppressive rates, I worry the Bay Area won't be as
innovative anymore because startups (software and hardware) won't be able to
afford taking risks.

~~~
reaperducer
>Electronics (physical things) require prototyping shops, which require
physical space.

This is true. Look at any of the 70's and 80's computer magazines on
archive.org, and you'll see only about 20% of the ads are from companies in
SV. All the others are scattered in cities big and small from coast to coast.

It's amazing to think that small towns in Illinois and rural Virginia used to
have big players in the hardware industry.

Now, with the exception of the increasingly rare spark from Apple, it's not
about building innovative and interesting physical things anymore. It's about
taking other people's money and shuffling it around trying to make more of it
through half-baked startup ideas. Silicon Valley is just banking in slow
motion.

~~~
rxhernandez
> innovative

What was the last thing Apple made that wasn't just a marginally polished
version of someone else's invention?

~~~
wpietri
This might be a bit hyperbolic, but I agree with the general thrust. Their
watch was a pretty clear response to Pebble. The iPhone was an impressive
achievement, but smartphones had been available for 6 years when it was
released. The iPod was certainly the best MP3 player, but it was far from the
first.

That's not really a knock on Apple; they've been very successful jumping in to
proven markets with incredibly polished versions of existing products. But I
agree it's been a long while since they've done anything as innovative as
their early days. They got a nice injection of innovation when they brought
back Jobs's other company, NeXT, including the foundation of all their current
operating systems. But even that stuff is almost 30 years old.

~~~
rbanffy
> smartphones had been available for 6 years when it was released.

I had a Sony Ericsson P-800 when the iPhone was launched. It was the first
smartphone that didn't look like something out of Star Trek (and I mean it in
a bad way). When you compare an iPhone with my P-800, it looks like the iPhone
is something that actually came from the future.

~~~
wpietri
Sure. I had a Palm Treo. The iPhone was definitely a better product, a highly
evolved one from a consumer perspective. But it's not like Apple invented the
smartphone or the MP3 player. They did improve them drastically from the user
perspective, and they are amazing marketers. I give them full credit for that,
but rxhernandez has a point.

~~~
rbanffy
> it's not like Apple invented the smartphone or the MP3 player

It's not. It's more like they invented the first usable smartphone and the MP3
player everyone would want to have.

There is a parallel with the Apple II here - it was one of the very first
personal computers that was approachable, self-contained (with a real keyboard
built-in), booted from a ROM with an easy to use programming language, could
display color, output sound, and had expansion slots that were usually hidden
under a beige cover. Apple didn't invent the personal computer - they only
made one of the first ones people would actually want to use.

------
dangrossman
"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
I guess I can do without Weirdstuff for a few more youtube censors.

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

~~~
philfrasty
damn those iomega jaz & zip drives bring back memories...thanks for sharing

~~~
colordrops
bad memories... they were never reliable for me. click of death etc

~~~
codazoda
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.

~~~
colordrops
Both my friend and I had drives with the click of death problem. It could be a
1 in 10,000 event, or it could be that the rate was higher than 1%. I remember
it being a very common problem at the time.

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

~~~
jhpankow
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.

------
tzs
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.

~~~
DrScump
St. John's is, and was, the better lunch choice there.

And that same building housed Ham Radio Outlet for decades.

------
AceJohnny2
Coincidentally, this Saturday will be the Electronics Flea Market at Fry's
Sunnyvale, nearby:

[https://www.evilmadscientist.com/2018/electronics-flea-
marke...](https://www.evilmadscientist.com/2018/electronics-flea-market-now-
in-sunnyvale/)

~~~
russellbeattie
"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...

~~~
itomato
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.

~~~
CamperBob2
Wasn't there a recurring swap meet at De Anza College at one point?

~~~
natch
Yes, every month. I guess it's moving to the Sunnyvale Fry's parking lot as of
this month though:

[http://www.electronicsfleamarket.com](http://www.electronicsfleamarket.com)

------
ChuckMcM
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).

~~~
jaysonelliot
This is the best thing I've read about the closing of WSW, because it helps me
put the entire situation in perspective. I'm as sad as ever about it all, but
considering it in the context of the entire arc of the Silicon Valley story is
comforting in some way. Wistful, but at least it's satisfying.

Maybe it's time to consider moving to Shenzhen. There certainly does seem to
be a thriving maker and hacker community there.

~~~
tzakrajs
Your last sentence reminds me of this recent post
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHP-
OPXK2ig](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHP-OPXK2ig) and it gives such a cool
sense of Shenzhen as a place to make and modify things.

------
bifrost
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
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.

------
asteli
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
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
Nice, on-line place for optical stuff:
[https://www.surplusshed.com/](https://www.surplusshed.com/)

~~~
natch
Wow, looks like a great source! Thanks.

------
emh68
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
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 ;)

------
VectorLock
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
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
[https://surveillancevalley.com/](https://surveillancevalley.com/)

------
raintrees
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...

------
cardamomo
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
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.

------
alanpost
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.

------
jdblair
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
Then you see it in the Silicon Valley Museum of Technology - what does that
make you?

~~~
jdblair
Arrived.

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

~~~
uxp100
Go to the Electronics flea put on by the Hams. Monthly on Saturday mornings.

~~~
davewongillies
Which is on this Saturday in the Fry's carpark in Sunnyvale!
[https://www.electronicsfleamarket.com/](https://www.electronicsfleamarket.com/)

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

~~~
Prefinem
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.

------
aurizon
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) ...

------
itworker7
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.

------
jcoffland
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)

------
ada1981
I never knew about these guys, what did they sell.

~~~
chadbennett
[https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://weirdstuff.com/](https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://weirdstuff.com/)

------
apotheothesomai
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.

------
cfadvan
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.

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

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

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

~~~
jrnichols
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.

------
tzakrajs
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.

------
rbanffy
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.

------
ndesaulniers
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.

------
russellbeattie
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!

------
grassclone
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!

------
rwz
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. :(

------
mikx007
If you live in IL, check out Han's System. They sort of have the same look and
feel as wierdstuff warehouse.

------
Aloha
This is a sad day.

I'm sad to see them go.

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

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

------
bcaulfield
Nooooooooooooooooooooo

------
Biker_27
Passing of an icon.

------
weirdstuff
Well, it was a good run.

------
wiseleo
No! My favorite place :(

------
chheplo
Wow.. This is sad.

------
MentallyRetired
Who?

