Going there always made me feel inspired, excited, and reinvigorated with creativity. Good for coders block. There is a thrill with holding an artifact and considering its previous use and a potential use. Or just the challenge of buying some vaguely non-functional vintage computer, learning about it, repairing it.<p>I've found software that I've worked on, things I'd lusted after from magazines, but couldn't have afforded at the time (ooh, a Telebit Trailblazer! A wide format plotter!) and just weird (16 gross cleanroom booties! queCats!). Once I found a box of floppies with the name of someone that I used to work with at another company. Things just wind up there.<p>Oh well, I guess its going to have to be more frequent visits to the foothill[1] flea market...[2]<p>[1] Not at Foothill[3] anymore - moved to DeAnza College.<p>[2] <a href="http://www.electronicsfleamarket.com/?electronics=" rel="nofollow">http://www.electronicsfleamarket.com/?electronics=</a><p>[3] Big note on [2] that they're actually moving to the Fry's parking lot in Sunnyvale for the first one of the year (April 14, 2018)
That's symbolic. This marks the end of DIY garage entrepreneural days of the Silicon Valley. Now the corporate/careerist era has firmly settled in.
I remember feeling like they were the Fry's version of Mike Quinn's Electronics.<p>I think that placed closed long ago, but was out in WWII era temporary buildings near the Oakland airport and had lots of really weird stuff. I remember seeing old test equipment that probably came from LBL and looked like it should be on a movie set with some Jacobs ladders...
My favorite memory about weird stuff: I have a no name rack mount server case that was missing a key for the front lock. Unsurprisingly they had the exact same case and sold me a spare for cheap.<p>I always loved looking at all the old gear there, it brought back a lot of memories. Netopia, Netscreens, old Cisco routers, Sun servers.<p>Here's a blog post someone put up about the closing as well: <a href="https://rsts11.com/2018/04/06/weird-stuff-warehouse-is-closing-this-weekend/" rel="nofollow">https://rsts11.com/2018/04/06/weird-stuff-warehouse-is-closi...</a>
Philadelphia had a similar high-tech junkyard back in the 1980's. I still have the 4K wire-wrapped magnetic core memory board I bought there for a few bucks. When backlit, the board is really quite beautiful.
Didn’t they have a commercial lease? Seems odd that they can just be kicked out because ownership of the building changed. Unless commercial leases work differently there than they do here (Australia)?