Surplus in Silicon Valley

[plato computer]

There's a place that I love called Mike Quinn's , in Oakland, on Adams 
Street; which basically is 1/4 mile East of Hegenberger & Adams.  To be 
precise, it's exactly 1 1/2 miles south-east of the Oakland Airport.

Basically, it's a graveyard for everything - and there's not a price tag 
in the place - so everything is negotiatable; Don't spend time asking for 
what the prices are - this makes them mad. And don't call - even if they 
have a part, they'll tell you no.  BUT it's a goldmine for EVERYTHING you 
can imagine, from old 40XX and 74XX logic components, to MFM drives, 
power supplies, PCs, RS-232 terminals, and testing equipment.

Last time I was there, they just received about 80 machines Silicon 
Graphics machines from the folks at (un-named local graphics shop for 
movie industry).  The drives were flashed with the OS only. 

Okay, so there's a lot of stuff there.  

I have very often brought them stuff, and only gone back to re-purchase 
it later on (heh...) or in the case that I picked up some nice parts from 
Quinn's, and put on ebay, they were bought by a Rusiian Aerospace 
Company, which they responded quite frustratingly when they discovered 
that I had written out a "Materials Manifest" when sending them to Russia 
via U.S. Postal Service on the Customs Declarations.  "High Quality 
Milled Aluminum Parts for ??? Purpose".

Now, a lot of people won't tell you about Quinn's electronics , because 
it's sort of a secret place that people like to go - and because it's 
reasonable, but it's really the most awesome place I have ever gone to in 
the bay area for electronics.

Aaron



-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Davidson <medavidson at mac.com>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only" <cctech at classiccmp.org>
Cc: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Date: Sun, 3 Jul 2005 17:33:12 -0700
Subject: Re: Surplus in Silicon Valley

> If you go to Weird Stuff, see if you can get a tour of the back  
> warehouse... that's where the real fun stuff can be found...  Of  
> course, if you are in the market for an Onyx (BIG SGI machine), they  
> have 2 out in the warehouse.  All you need is a big truck and 3-phase  
> power. :)
> 
> Mark Davidson
> medavidson at mac.com
> 
> On Jun 24, 2005, at 6:23 AM, Mike Loewen wrote:
> 
> >
> >    I'm headed out to the San Francisco area at the end of July:  
> > area there any worthwhile surplus outfits to visit?  I'm already  
> > planning to hit Halted and Weird Stuff, just for the hell of it.
> >
> >
> > Mike Loewen                mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us
> > The Dixie Lion Jazz Band        http://ripsaw.cac.psu.edu/dixie.html
> > The B9 Robot Builders Club B9-0014    http://ripsaw.cac.psu.edu/ 
> > ~mloewen/B9/
> > Old Technology    http://ripsaw.cac.psu.edu/~mloewen/Oldtech/
> >
>