Component Organization - Good score from the surplus shop

[Jester]

I was wandering around a surplus shop a couple of days ago and found this "Leaning Tower of Pisa Component Organizers" for $100, and then spent the next two days transferring and reorganizing mostly old style through-hole components. I still have another 300 or so empty drawers to go, but need to design some electronics before I keel over in boredom.

[Jester]

More pics....

[cdev]

Very nice!  I am gathering it rotates to save space- thats just great.

Just a reminder if you live in earthquake country, you might want to mount a ball-bearing swivel on the very center - the point it rotates around on top connected to a hook or similar on the ceiling or on a piece of wood that attaches to the wall behind it. To hold it vertically. Then it won't lean, also.

Might be a good idea wherever you live.

[Jester]

Very nice!  I am gathering it rotates to save space- thats just great.

Yes, I should have typed  The rotating "Leaning Tower of Pisa Component Organizers"

It actually rotates easily, on some sort of sealed bearing. The only down-side is the drawers in the bottom row are too low for easy observation, they will be the last to be filled.

[bd139]

Watch out for them. Back at university we had a couple of them. someone had a bit too much to drink at lunch and fell on one and knocked it over. That was not pretty 

[cdev]

Very nice!  I am gathering it rotates to save space- thats just great.

Yes, I should have typed  The rotating "Leaning Tower of Pisa Component Organizers"

It actually rotates easily, on some sort of sealed bearing. The only down-side is the drawers in the bottom row are too low for easy observation, they will be the last to be filled.

It's like a "Lazy Susan" - Asian restaurants have them- a swiveling platform for families so all can reach the plates heaped with different kinds of food.
To do that they need a strong ball-bearing containing swivel.

Maybe you could raise it up just a bit on a square piece of wood, would make it a lot easier on the knees to get in there (and protect your parts and the steel ball bearings from rust if god forbid you got some water in there or something).

[Jester]

Watch out for them. Back at university we had a couple of them. someone had a bit too much to drink at lunch and fell on one and knocked it over. That was not pretty 

"It seemed pretty stable at the time".......

Beer and Engineering say its not so, our University Terminator Bashes were legendary, liquor license for 500 and some how 1000 admission tickets printed.

Maybe you could raise it up just a bit on a square piece of wood, would make it a lot easier on the knees to get in there (and protect your parts and the steel ball bearings from rust if god forbid you got some water in there or something).

That's a good idea, I will build a pedestal when we move about a year from now.

[bsudbrink]

I'm wondering what part of the country you are in.  I think I may know where those came from.

[Jester]

Bsudbrink

According to the stickers this started out at General Electric.

[bsudbrink]

Ah, ok.  Not what I thought.  I'm pretty sure that there were similar fixtures at (typing with a tear in my eye) Baynesville Electronics:

https://baltimorefishbowl.com/stories/six-decades-baynesville-electronics-closing-doors/

[Jester]

That's really unfortunate. 

Many years ago while in college I would repair color TV's to make some spending money. It was 5pm on a Saturday and I was desperately phoning around trying to find someone open until 6pm that would sell me a large electrolytic capacitor so I could complete a repair.  The local TV repair place I called suggested I call "Chester" and gave me a number. Well it turns out that Chester was this really old character (picture Coke bottle glasses and an unlit cigar) that repaired antique radios but also served the TV repair industry as a parts supplier and normally closed up shop at about 11:30 or midnight, 7 days a week. Chester had two or three large, 3-storey houses filled floor to ceiling with components.  Besides the very reasonable prices Chester loved to chat with his customers, I really took a shine to him and became an almost daily customer.

[cdev]

I used to love stores like that. There used to be a bunch of them in NYC on Canal St. when I was a geeky little kid. They were so dense with stuff it was just stacked up to the ceiling. Those stores were so cool, and some of them were just huge. Often you would have to go down small stairs into a sort of basement space.. The electronics devices would all be displayed with not an inch to spare, with many of the displays all blinking this and that text, or video, flashing in all different colors. Plus all sorts of surplus gear and stuff from Japan and really everything that existed at the time, cheap. You could find the most amazing stuff there.

[GreyWoolfe]

I used to love stores like that. There used to be a bunch of them in NYC on Canal St. when I was a geeky little kid. They were so dense with stuff it was just stacked up to the ceiling. Those stores were so cool, and some of them were just huge. Often you would have to go down small stairs into a sort of basement space.. The electronics devices would all be displayed with not an inch to spare, with many of the displays all blinking this and that text, or video, flashing in all different colors. Plus all sorts of surplus gear and stuff from Japan and really everything that existed at the time, cheap. You could find the most amazing stuff there.

I had a retired uncle into electronics as a hobby.  I used to take him over to Canal street and he would buy broken CB radios to repair for fun.  Then we would go to Chinatown and eat lunch at a little hole in the wall place that the only 2 words anywhere in English were house special.  Good times.

[cdev]

There were also just amazing huge incredibly well stocked used book and music/record stores in Lower Manhattan that I remember from back then.

Not like now, post-gentrification.



So, SF Bay Area folks - Halted.com/HSC now has an announcement that they are moving - not closing - to a short distance away,

This likely means they aren't closing- at least not for a while?