EEVblog #737 - World's Biggest Collection Of Electronics Components

[JoeO]

So when many people were thinking the owner of this collection had passed away, it reminded me of an episode of the Retrocomputing Roundtable podcast from a while ago, where they discussed how they would handle what would become of their collections of old computers when they are gone.  They suggested that one should leave instructions about what has value.  Value as a collectors item, value as a family heirloom, etc...

For example, I have two nearly identical Compaq Portable computers from 1983.  One is my first computer, bought for me by my parents, on which I spent countless hours learning how computers work, at 4.77MHz.  The other is just one my Dad brought home for parts a decade later.  I should probably label the one that is mine, as the family might want to keep it around. I could label most of the other computers I've kept with tags that say "this is junk, just get rid of it." 

Or, I have several storage boxes full of electronic parts that belonged to my grandfather.  Stuff he collected back in the 70's mostly. I wouldn't want someone to just throw the stuff away because it looks like old junk.  Some of it is interesting.  I have some of those Monsanto LEDs like Fran showed in a video -- the ones with a single gold lead and the body is the other connection. I don't even remember what other interesting stuff is in those boxes...

I guess the point of my rambling is that maybe one should document the story of their collections while they can, so that you know that maybe when you're gone the right thing might be done with your stuff.

What is important to you may not be important to your children.

Give your stuff away now, while people you know can appreciate it for what it is and who you are.  The stuff that belongs to your grandfather has sentimental value to you but if your kids never met him, the value to them will be much less.

Good Luck!

[Tothwolf]

Wow...a few people really missed the mark here (re: the "hoarder" and "ocd" comments being tossed around).

My somewhat educated guess as to all the used parts is that Mr. Sparkes at some point serviced "vintage" test gear, with from the looks of it, a strong focus on Tektronix 500 and 7000 series[1] (1960s-1970s). With this sort of gear, parts were often graded at the factory to meet certain specs,[2] so it would be no surprise at all to see lots of used semiconductors. (...and you can't just pop into Farnell and buy a tunnel diode today, either.) As for used resistors...special "low inductance" resistors were pretty common in this sort of test gear, too.

The blacklights would make calibrating or photographing the displays on this sort of gear much easier (none of them fancy LCDs or on-screen digital readouts with that sort of gear). Heck, the curve tracers alone are a dead giveaway that there was some specialized work going on here.

Dave, any chance David Sparkes is related to Robert G. [George] Sparkes? That might also well explain the stash of parts, and especially all the Tektronix parts I saw in the video (the transformers and CRTs are especially easy to spot).

[1] http://w140.com/tekwiki/wiki/Main_Page

[2] http://www.ko4bb.com/manuals/download.php?file=Tektronix/Tektronix_-_Miscelaneous/Tektronix_Xref_sm.pdf

[Carl_Smith]

What is important to you may not be important to your children.

Yeah, I understand that.  And I don't have children so that makes it even more pointless to worry about what happens to my stuff.
I just figured if they, whoever that may be, knows at least a few things that were important to me they can decide if that makes the items important to them as well.

Also, I do have some electronic components that have no sentimental value, but are valuable enough to be worth throwing up on eBay, such as a bunch of tubes of mosfets that are probably worth a few thousand dollars.  Hate to see something like that go in the bin because they don't know it has any value.    (Funny --  spell check thinks mosfets should be marmosets.)
 

[Fungus]

Or, I have several storage boxes full of electronic parts that belonged to my grandfather.  Stuff he collected back in the 70's mostly. I wouldn't want someone to just throw the stuff away because it looks like old junk.  Some of it is interesting.  I have some of those Monsanto LEDs like Fran showed in a video -- the ones with a single gold lead and the body is the other connection. I don't even remember what other interesting stuff is in those boxes...

Less and less people will be interested in Monsanto LEDs as time passes. Probably very few people will know what they are a few years from now.

I'm currently in the process of clearing out stuff that was "interesting" to me a few years back. I'm keeping the really important/nice stuff but everything else is going on eBay.

eg. I sold an old calculator for $1000 last week. It's been in a drawer for about 20 years so I figure I don't need it. Nobody would know what to do with it if I die and $1000 gets me some nice new toys to play with in the here and now. I've got a few things like that stashed away and most of them would look like "old junk" to a house clearer.

I guess the point of my rambling is that maybe one should document the story of their collections while they can, so that you know that maybe when you're gone the right thing might be done with your stuff.

I've recently decided not to wait that long.

My OCD at the moment is typing everything I've got lying around into eBay to find out what it could be worth. I've had a couple of surprises so far.

eg. I found an old promo CD that I've had since the 1990s which might easily be worth $500-$600 (I'll find out next week!) Would I trade that CD for a high-end Fluke? You betcha...

[Cliff Matthews]

Wow...a few people really missed the mark here (re: the "hoarder" and "ocd" comments being tossed around)...

Ok that's another angle, but the 12:45 comment, "must have spent his entire life just de-soldering" was a little too telling. I responded because he used enough gestures and adjectives to have the dude look for a shrink. So would any tech de-solder that much?

[Carl_Smith]

eg. I found an old promo CD that I've had since the 1990s which might easily be worth $500-$600 (I'll find out next week!) Would I trade that CD for a high-end Fluke? You betcha...

I was surprised to find PALCE16V8 PAL's going on ebay for $2-$3 each.   I have a bunch of those stashed away new in tubes from almost 20 years ago.  Those and the MOSFETs I mentioned earlier might pay for a low end Rigol oscilloscope for my bench.

Not sure about selling the PALs though.  They were rescued from their trip to the trash at a former employer, and they are laser marked with a company specific part number and programmed at the manufacturer (they are flash based and reprogrammable).  Never been out of the tubes, but the company didn't use the part anymore and were just going to toss them.

[JoeO]

Carl_Smith where do you live?  Turn on your country flag.

[miguelvp]

Carl_Smith where do you live?  Turn on your country flag.

He lives 10 hours NW of me by car (around 640 miles)

[calexanian]

At M.U. tube factory i sometimes have to dive the owners late uncles parts collections. Much larger than the place in the video, but nowhere near as organized. Its a depression era mentality thing. One day, not to far from now i will be having to do the same thing to that collection and figure out what to do with it. I am thinking the worlds biggest electronics flea market. both her father and uncle could never throw anything away and there are rack after rack of mixed, new used, and bad parts. The power resistor shelves alone must weigh a few thousand pounds. There a few rows of about 18 steel cabinets full up of components, mostly new, but a whole storage building, I would say 1000 square feet of just loosely sorted shelves of everything you can imagine, along with several tons of wire and cable. I counted about 30 loose Welch pumps, not already in equipment last time I was down there.  Also about 25 of those 400 and 500 series tek scopes. I really do want to make a museum one day. I was thinking about a kickstarter to make that happen. I working museum of making tubes and other historical electronics. I would put it in Vegas and make it a destination type thing. Come watch tubes, transformers, caps, neon signs, etc being made. I could also put together a great number of sputtering, thin film, and other high vacuum systems from whats sitting down there.

Would anybody else like to go to such a place? Kind of like a computer history museum, but more broad based for historic electronics.

[EEVblog]

eg. I sold an old calculator for $1000 last week.

Ooh, what one?

[Tothwolf]

Wow...a few people really missed the mark here (re: the "hoarder" and "ocd" comments being tossed around)...

Ok that's another angle, but the 12:45 comment, "must have spent his entire life just de-soldering" was a little too telling. I responded because he used enough gestures and adjectives to have the dude look for a shrink. So would any tech de-solder that much?

I've stripped many boards over the years. If you don't care about damaging the substrate, there are all sorts of ways to do it very fast. With a vacuum desoldering system, things go really fast too.

There are some components in older test gear that you simply cannot buy new, at any price. Tektronix in particular screened and pre-tested a lot of their parts. This can bite you when repairing their older test gear even today because something that seems generic may have been qualified to meet a certain spec, and replacing that component with a modern made version may not work the same in the circuit.

After looking at the photos in the other related eBay listings, the background in those photos makes it incredibly clear the guy at some point had some sort of service/repair setup going on.

Dave, did your friend end up with the tubes, CRTs, and transformers as well? I didn't see an eBay listing for those.

[Fungus]

eg. I sold an old calculator for $1000 last week.

Ooh, what one?

Curta brand: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curta

They don't run on electrons, sorry...  (and it was slightly over $1000 after eBay fees  )

They're mechanical beauties, Babbage's difference engine in your pocket. Adam Savage keeps a couple right next to his Blade Runner gun:

I had three of them so I figured I could spare one. I kept the nicest one for myself. The other is a bit of a beater that hangs around my desk, it made an easter-egg appearance in my sparkfun multimeter teardown but nobody seems to have spotted it:

[chrisc]

Curta brand: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curta

wow, that was a real rabbit-hole. I just spent two hours reading up and viewing videos on this unit.

As a lad in the pre-computer days I had a real fascination with mechanical calculators (shreds of various old cash registers and mechanical tabulators are probably still embedded in the dirt floor of my parent's old workshop) but for some reason I'd never heard of it, and I grew up in the 60's when they were still being regularly used! (Maybe they weren't so common in Australia).

[VK3DRB]

After hearing Dave say the word "toobs" a couple of times in a fake American accent, I almost switched off. But I am glad I persevered. It was a good video and I agree the collection is exceptional.

David Sparks whoever he is or was practised 5S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5S_%28methodology%29

Most decent electronics labs would practice 5S, whether it be at home or at work. Because the parts were de-soldered they are in some ways BETTER THAN NEW because they leads are pre-tinned with solder. As many of us have experienced, old pin-though-hole resistors and capacitors are often difficult to solder because the leads are so dreadfully oxidised. I had to eventually throw my 35 year old collection of resistors in the bin because they were no longer solderable. Age had got the better of them.

The tins of hardware bolts and bits are not very smart though because you cannot see what is in them. Still, at $30, who would complain. Dave might want to add $100 for some see through containers, or add some parts photos or dimensions on the front of the cans.

[Tothwolf]

Most decent electronics labs would practice 5S, whether it be at home or at work. Because the parts were de-soldered they are in some ways BETTER THAN NEW because they leads are pre-tinned with solder. As many of us have experienced, old pin-though-hole resistors and capacitors are often difficult to solder because the leads are so dreadfully oxidised. I had to eventually throw my 35 year old collection of resistors in the bin because they were no longer solderable. Age had got the better of them.

The tins of hardware bolts and bits are not very smart though because you cannot see what is in them. Still, at $30, who would complain. Dave might want to add $100 for some see through containers, or add some parts photos or dimensions on the front of the cans.

You might try to find a Hexacon MA-860 braid cleaner. They work extremely well to clean the leads of really old parts. They usually sell for about USD $20 but some companies will only sell them in a factory package of 3.

The eBay photos for the tins of hardware seem to indicate that many are not full or contain multiple items. Many are also labeled "unsorted". My suggestion would be to obtain a ton of 2"x3" zip-lock bags and then store those in bead boxes. I did just this for my own collection of fasteners and it made all the difference in terms of being able to find exactly what I need when I needed it. Each size/style/type of washer, nut, screw, etc gets its own small bag and I can group multiple bags into the compartments in the bead boxes in a logical arrangement (type/size/etc) with different boxes for different types of hardware.

[Quarlo Klobrigney]

It's actually pronounced chubes. 

After hearing Dave say the word "toobs" a couple of times in a fake American accent, I almost switched off.

[Fungus]

Curta brand: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curta

wow, that was a real rabbit-hole. I just spent two hours reading up and viewing videos on this unit.

There's videos showing but they don't really transmit the sounds and the feeling you get in your hand when you turn the crank and all the cogs start spinning inside it. They're the ultimate toy if you're into mechanical stuff and precision engineering.

[station240]

I was surprised to find PALCE16V8 PAL's going on ebay for $2-$3 each.   I have a bunch of those stashed away new in tubes from almost 20 years ago.  Those and the MOSFETs I mentioned earlier might pay for a low end Rigol oscilloscope for my bench.

Not sure about selling the PALs though.  They were rescued from their trip to the trash at a former employer, and they are laser marked with a company specific part number and programmed at the manufacturer (they are flash based and reprogrammable).  Never been out of the tubes, but the company didn't use the part anymore and were just going to toss them.

Yeah PALs aren't being made any more, I have a design that uses the old 16V8, which luckily can be replaced with two 7400 series chips which works out cheaper. Kind of annoying the PALs are such high prices.

Some of the ICs in this collection are worthless though, who never needs to replace the audio amp in a cassette radio ?

[han]

Please somebody contact hackedgadgets they need that collection for their name-the-thing-contest 

http://hackedgadgets.com/2015/04/25/name-the-thing-contest-279

[Radio Tech]

Wow...a few people really missed the mark here (re: the "hoarder" and "ocd" comments being tossed around).

"snip"

 
Agreed

[iva]

On a related topic: do you guys use any database to store the parts you purchase or simply rely on memory and good labeling in your labs?

I started to look for something opensource but couldn't find anything with all the fields/features I wanted (multiple suppliers, datasheets and so on - and with local storage) and ready to use.

I used this Video as an initiation to tidy up my (junk) hobby-room
I was astonished about the amount of parts I forgot about.

I doanloadet this free part / project managementsoftware:
http://www.mmvisual.de/elela.htm

It's not open source but hey, its free.
It looks like its available in english too.

Thanks!
Seems to be doing everything I need.

I was mainly looking for something opensource as in case issues come up there's still the possibility to fix them by yourself (and usually there's a bigger community behind opensource compared to "freeware" projects).

At the end of the day the data you enter - and the time it takes - is the biggest value, so saving money because a program is free doesn't make sense if it isn't supported well.
The author seems responsive on the mikrokontroller.net forum so I might give it a try.

And thanks to all the others that answered my question too! 

[EEVblog]

UPDATE & QUESTION:
Who would want to buy a storage box full of these parts? with the proceeds going to charity.

[chrisc]

UPDATE & QUESTION:
Who would want to buy a storage box full of these parts? with the proceeds going to charity.

Not sure I need more stuff in my workshop but if the money goes to charity I'd be in it.

What charity do you have in mind?

[Barny]

UPDATE & QUESTION:
Who would want to buy a storage box full of these parts? with the proceeds going to charity.

Wouldn't it be better to make an electronic workshop for kids and use the parts for educational purposes?

[SeanB]

Anything other than the boxes of couch feet would be good. I think the charity would be one Dave likes, probably an Australian one, and probably a cancer group.