12 Aug
2012
12 Aug
'12
9:30 p.m.
On 8/12/12 9:13 PM, Dave McGuire wrote:
Brick-and-mortar stores are WAY overrated. (and
dying)
I went to three different stores to buy a piece of perf board, and ended
up getting a used one at Halted (with Haltek printed on it!). The section
at Frys was completely empty at the Palo Alto and Sunnyvale store.
I can get it from dozens of places on line, if I wanted to wait a couple
of days and pay shipping, though I probably spent more than that on gas.
I was just complaining on Saturday that the price for things like wire-wrap
sockets have tripled in the last couple of years, if you can even find them.
The parts stocks in the valley surplus places are drying up. Halted was
completely out of stock of 9 through 25 pin D connectors. This is bad news
for finding old parts that used to be really common to keep systems going.
You can't really buy a lot of this kind of stuff on line, you need to LOOK
at it to see if you can make it work if it doesn't exactly match.