What ever happened to Amazing1.com (aka Information Unlimited)?

[Ben321]

This was a site that sold all kinds of cool high voltage equipment and components, for reasonable prices. While I never bought anything from them yet, I kept their site bookmarked in case I ever did decide to buy anything from them. Well about a month ago I checked and the whole site is down, and it's been down every time after that I checked. There never was any post on their site that they were having business trouble or any other indication their site would shut down soon. Just one day it was down, and never came back online. I checked their FB page (https://www.facebook.com/InformationUnlimitedINC/), and it seems one of the founders of the company had recently passed away. However the date on the post mentioning the guy's death was from a month before the site went down. That seems strange that it was that far apart, but I can only assume that guy's death somehow related to the site shutting down. Was he the guy who paid the bills for the DNS server for the website's domain name (amazing1.com)? Does anybody here have more inside info on the situation, maybe a member of this forum who personally knows the guys who ran that site, and can provide more info on what is going on with that website? I really hope this is just a temporary situation, and that they aren't going to close the whole company and website because of that one guy's death.

[coppercone2]

I think it was a bit of a hobby business, the guy liked scientists & education. Not sure if its the most viable thing without him.

[Ben321]

I think it was a bit of a hobby business, the guy liked scientists & education. Not sure if its the most viable thing without him.

They had all kinds of stuff though. What will they do with their excess inventory? They need to sell it off somehow. I thought he may have been one of the founders, but I thought there was an entire team of employees there running the company, including product engineers who always came up with ideas for new products. Also they were able to get all kinds of components that would be very rare outside of the high voltage industry, like capacitors and resistors designed to operate at tens of kilovolts. I figured they must have had some sort of business arrangement with a manufacturer of these components (which would normally have been sold only to manufacturers of high voltage devices), so they could buy these rare components from the manufacturer of said components, and then sell them to the hobbyist market (rather than the normal device manufacturer market).

[Alex Eisenhut]

Were they advertising in electronics magazines in the 1980s? I was really intrigued by all those ads back then. Tesla coils! Simulated lasers!

[Weston]

I remember that the amazing1 ads in the back of Popular Science (early 2000's when I was a young kid) were some of my favorite parts of the magazine. Its actually really the only thing I remember from those magazines...

Some of the stuff they sold seemed a bit kooky, but I was happy to finally buy a spun aluminium toroid topload from them a few years back for my tesla coil. Much better than the two taped together metal salad bowls I was using before that!

If they are truly gone, sad to see them go. Arduino and all that seem to be effective getting people into EECS, but it does seem a bit bland in comparison.

[coppercone2]

well the worlds gonna be short on plasma physicists. dark ages

[thm_w]

wayback: https://web.archive.org/web/20230811062305/https://amazing1.com/

Looks like a lot of crazy niche stuff.
Even a TMS device: https://web.archive.org/web/20230811072338/https://www.amazing1.com/health.html#tdhp40del

[Marc Brutschy]

The founder of Amazing1 was Robert Iannini, who also authored a number of books, like Electronic Gadgets for the Evil Genius.  I happened to call the company just after Bob had passed away, and the impression I got was that he was the technical genius behind all their products.  It sounded like the company might not be able to continue without him, so I think that may be why the webpage disappeared.  I was going to buy a solid state Tesla coil from them, but now I guess I'll have to build it from the instructions in Bob's books.

[Ben321]

The founder of Amazing1 was Robert Iannini, who also authored a number of books, like Electronic Gadgets for the Evil Genius.  I happened to call the company just after Bob had passed away, and the impression I got was that he was the technical genius behind all their products.  It sounded like the company might not be able to continue without him, so I think that may be why the webpage disappeared.  I was going to buy a solid state Tesla coil from them, but now I guess I'll have to build it from the instructions in Bob's books.

Did you get any info info on what they planned to do with all the individual components they were selling, that they still had stock of at the time of Bob's death? (High voltage diodes, transformers, capacitors, and even the custom flyback transformers without the normally built-in diode, for outputting high frequency hv ac)?  Also there were plenty of already assembled high frequency high voltage power supplies, and dc high voltage power supplies in stock, that could be sold, even if nobody else there could build another one. Are they just going to toss all these components and assembled devices in the trash. Or are they going to try to sell them off on eBay? Or do they plan to restart the amazing1.com website to sell them off?

If you still have their phone number, maybe you could call them back, and ask them these questions on my behalf. Because there's lots of stuff that I wanted to buy from them, but haven't yet.

[KE5FX]

The founder of Amazing1 was Robert Iannini, who also authored a number of books, like Electronic Gadgets for the Evil Genius.  I happened to call the company just after Bob had passed away, and the impression I got was that he was the technical genius behind all their products.  It sounded like the company might not be able to continue without him, so I think that may be why the webpage disappeared.  I was going to buy a solid state Tesla coil from them, but now I guess I'll have to build it from the instructions in Bob's books.

Try www.onetesla.com , maybe?

[Ben321]

The founder of Amazing1 was Robert Iannini, who also authored a number of books, like Electronic Gadgets for the Evil Genius.  I happened to call the company just after Bob had passed away, and the impression I got was that he was the technical genius behind all their products.  It sounded like the company might not be able to continue without him, so I think that may be why the webpage disappeared.  I was going to buy a solid state Tesla coil from them, but now I guess I'll have to build it from the instructions in Bob's books.

Try www.onetesla.com , maybe?

When I try to go there, I get this error message from my browser.

Warning: Potential Security Risk Ahead

Firefox detected a potential security threat and did not continue to www.onetesla.com. If you visit this site, attackers could try to steal information like your passwords, emails, or credit card details.

The certificate is only valid for onetesla.com.

Error code: SSL_ERROR_BAD_CERT_DOMAIN

Apparently their SSL certificate is only good for onetesla.com and not also for www.onetesla.com

[KE5FX]

Apparently their SSL certificate is only good for onetesla.com and not also for www.onetesla.com

Hmm, yep, looks like that's the case.

They're legit.  Or at least they were a few years ago (I built one of their first-gen kits).

Also built a coil based one of Iannini's old BTC-5 plans back in the day when I could get away with wearing tennis shorts in public. 

[Ben321]

So what did they do with all the products they still had in stock? Yes last time I checked (before its closing) they had quite a few components and devices in stock still. Did they throw all those in the trash? Donate them to a local school science lab? Or do they have plans to sell them on eBay? Please, anybody here who has inside knowledge (either because you were an employee at the company, or are a friend of someone who worked there), let me know what they are planning to do with their leftover stock that they had when they closed.