Sorry if this has already gone around, but I only saw it yesterday after a friend sent me the link: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/02/05/technology/personaltech/20090… It reminded me of ELI in Cambridge Massachusetts, which was a similar type of place back when I lived in the Boston area, but which is now gone. I can only imagine that Halted will not be around too much longer and I definitely want to stop there the next time I'm in the area... --tom

"ultimately, Halted is the last of a dying breed" NIce reporting. Leeds, the oldest of the bunch (by far) is still open in the backyard of the New York Times, in Brooklyn. Fair Radio in Lima is still going strong for 60 some years. And there are smaller places, barely on the radar. -- Will

On Wednesday 25 February 2009 11:52:54 am William Donzelli wrote: Are they? I've taken notice of them and have intentions of stopping in there one of these times I make a trip to The City... I used to get their catalogs, might even have one or more kicking around here someplace. I really miss having had access to bunches of places like that in the NYC area when I was growing up. :-( -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

Gateway Electronics was also in Houston for many years Electronic Parts Outlet, the Houston location is better, the Clear Lake location is not even the same company (rumor has it Richard pays them to use the name). Mendelsons Electronics in Dayton is cool, stop by when you to there for the next hamfest I just discovered Surplus Gizmos in Hilsboro OR, full of silicon forest dust! The Black Hole in Los Alamos Mex - this guy is famous for the FBI searches that occasionally happen there. Evidently some TOP SECRET stuff from the lab gets out the door and under the wire Randy _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live? Hotmail?:?more than just e-mail. http://windowslive.com/explore?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_t2_hm_justgotbetter_explor…

Chuck Guzis wrote: They where before they hit the floor. :) Now you bid on ebay for sweepings of what ever you want. Ben. Ok, I don't bid now since they only permit credit cards and pay pal.

Chuck Guzis wrote: hey, even Seymour Cray built the 1604, first transistorized supercomputer using just surplus transistors :) =Dan [ = http://www2.applegate.org/~ragooman/ ]

They died a really long time ago, probably by 1983. I grew up in Wakefield, MA and remember them well. I used to raid their dumpster and those around them.

On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 11:42 AM, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote: Are you sure that wasn't the "Receiving" dumpster? -ethan

On Feb 27, 2009, at 3:21 PM, Fred Cisin wrote: Stuff that worked, from what I'm told.

Hi I had good results from PolyPak diodes. The transistors and others rarely had better than 50% useable. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live?: Life without walls. http://windowslive.com/explore?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_allup_1a_explore_032009

On Wed, 2009-02-25 at 11:52 -0500, William Donzelli wrote: How's that place for walking into? I was thinking of making a 3 day weekend, and heading up there, since its only an hour and change north of me here in Dayton. Anyone done it relatively recently? David

On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 9:13 AM, Tom Uban <uban at ubanproductions.com> wrote: Wow, how did I miss visiting Halted when I was working in the SF area? Good thing I'm going back this summer... John -- "I've tried programming Ruby on Rails, following TechCrunch in my RSS reader, and drinking absinthe. It doesn't work. I'm going back to C, Hunter S. Thompson, and cheap whiskey." -- Ted Dziuba

Halted is still around, though they occasionally talk of closing down their retail front and doing internet and mail sales only. IIRC, they first opened in Sunnyvale on Evelyns next to an electrical contractor next to a trailer park, then moved down the street to an old office complex next to Lawrence, then had to move soon after because the property owners wanted to build something else there, so they ended up near Central and Lawrence in Santa Clara. Their first store carried tons of surplus mil gear, old test equipment from the 40's thru the 60's, Heathkit, and old stuf like cores, old Winchesters, CPU boards IMSAI, IIRC. Alltronics moved from Union Rd in Los Gatos to larger quarters on Zanker Road, then a few years later closed the retail front, opened the mail order and internet sales and moved to San Martin. The store has changed hands a few times. The founder was a ham and had quite a few pieces of ham and mil surplus. They also sold micro kits briefly. As mentioned, Haltek closed. Seems they closed for good. They also had a lot of mil surplus. Just before closing, they tossed a lot of useful old components and assemblies from really old hardware. I suspect that was when business really started dropping off. Weird Stuff is still around, having moved over by Moffett Field. They used to be right across the street from Fry's before Fry's moved into the old Link-Singer factory on Arques. Weird Stuff moved out first, though. They still carry a lot of interesting stuff, such as tons of old and used computer hardware and software, including mini and micro stuff. There was a lot of Commodore and Apple stuff there the last time I went, plus working Suns and old Macs for sale. Occasionally, they have old Winchesters for auction. The BIG ones: 14 inches or so. Interesting thing about Fry's: if you just looked at the store numbers, you might think that they actually had 20 or so stores. But many stores moved to bigger buildings and every time they moved, they got a new store number. The Sunnyvale store on Arques, which is store #12, is the third expansion of Store #1, which was originally behind the Carl's Jr on Lawrence just south of 101. There are a few "surplus" stores around the SillyCon Valley, most notable for carrying used PC stuff, old software and PRC knockoffs of various tools and hardware. Occasionally one can score some really good stuff, like old phone switch and end station parts, pallets of Cisco stuff, perhaps a Sun or two that were used as development systems, and even some old semiconductor equipment. Speaking of antikytheria, a surplus store in Moss Landing has one or two mechanical gunnery computers left. A place called Surplus Stuff was in Milpitas and had a lot of interesting office, industrial and computer surplus. Quements closed it's retail front years ago. Haven't heard of them since. They were a huge name in electronics sales for the area from the 1930's. Had a catalog bigger than Radio Shack's but smaller than Newark's. And even they sold micros in the late 70's and 80's. They tried PC sales, too, with the Osborne and IBM PC, but never got far with it. There used to be an old phone store in Cupertino, selling every kind of old phone stuff you could think of, from Bell, GTE and everyone else. They had old cord boards and Strowger frames, too. I don't know if they are still there. Cupertino has changed much lately. It used to be that an engineer could spend the day going from Haltek to Halted to Alltronics, to Surplus Stuff, to Weird Stuff, to Quements, to Fry's, etc., hunting for parts and old software they needed, breaking for lunch at Cal Fresh and waiting up to an hour in line to get in. Nowadays, it takes only an hour or so and there are no more lines at Cal Fresh (now Fresh Choice). There are too many knockoffs. hardly worth the trouble anymore. jd

probably over the top for shipping but if someone is *really* looking... The Ventura CA Craigslist has this listing posted today - 4-20. item 1131295322 Vintage Pertec Data Tape Drive 7" x 1/2" Tape In Rack Mount Cabinet - $100 (Oxnard -5 Points) s shumaker

On 24 Feb 2009 at 9:56, Alexandre Souza wrote: The Signetics pin-compatible replacement for the 571 is the 82S131 and is available for three bones here: http://www.hobbyroms.com/proms.html Not zero, but a lot better than $13. Cheers, Chuck