Store Review: Tanner Electronics - Carrollton, Tx

[Stonent]

I had been planning to go here for a little while, so I thought I'd do a little review.  I don't have any pictures of the inside of the store, but it is decent sized... About the size of a small to medium supermarket. I did take some pictures of interesting parts such as a 3 lead electrolytic capacitor.

They have lots and lots of caps of all types and sizes, resistors of all ranges and tolerances. Lots of miscellaneous surplus motors, steppers, etc. About every kind of transistor you can think of.

They had some Sparkfun and Propeller parts, various Arduino shields, Velleman kits, various cables for computer and TV connectivity. Pretty much 2 walls of DIY solder kits. (One was about 20 feet long, the other about 30 feet long)

They also had stuff for networking, cable, wall jacks and things of that nature.

They had a few AVR chips but just the older AVRs that weren't called Mega or Tiny.

Behind their counter is where all their chips are. From what I could see, they had the majority of the 74 series logic covered, 4000 series logic, various A/D converters, LM78xx regulators. Lots of EPROMS and older memory chips too in ceramic DIP packages.

Lots of knobs, and pots, however they were specifically out of Red Chicken Head knobs. (Yes had a box and it was empty).

My total with Tax came to 22.17 and here's what I got.

Code: [Select]

2 x 0.1" 40 pin header strips @ $0.59 each
2 x 0.01 uF "High Stability" Film Caps @ $0.19 each
1 x 1K 1W resistor @ $0.12 each
2 x 500K Linear Pots @ $1.25 each
1 x 5K Linear Pot @ $0.99 each
9 x 2N2222A @ $0.14 each
10 x 2N4403 @ $0.10 each
2 x KIA 555P Timer @ $0.39 each
1 x ST NE556N Dual Timer @ $0.49 each
2 x TI SN74HC595N Shift Registers @ $0.89 each
2 x SEC KA7805 5V 1A regulator @ $0.59 each
1 x 0.1" 10 pin box header @ $0.29 each
1 x 20 pin DIP socket @ $0.29 each
1 x 14 pin DIP socket @ $0.29 each
1 x 8 pin DIP socket @ $0.15 each
1 x 40 pin DIP socket @ $0.39 each
3 x Gold colored plastic knobs @ $0.49 each
1 x Mystery Uniden board @ $4.95 each
1 x 1.5" 8 ohm speaker @ $0.99 each
I'll post pictures of the parts and "Mystery Board" soon.

http://www.tannerelectronics.com/

[Stonent]

Here's a few pictures I took.
3LegCap.JPG The 3 wired capacitor I thought was odd.
BigCap.JPG This was the biggest cap I could find 0.068F or 68,000 uF. It was $10.95
WW1 through WW4, various big wire wound resistors.

[Rick Law]

I just looked up their site.  They don't have on-line selling.  Too bad.

http://www.tannerelectronics.com/

[Stonent]

I just looked up their site.  They don't have on-line selling.  Too bad.

http://www.tannerelectronics.com/

Yeah, their site is about the most extreme basic site I've ever seen.
Not even an e-mail address.

I was going to e-mail them and see if they could send me some photos, but no e-mail address.

[c4757p]

I love places like this. Too bad there aren't any near me anymore. There used to be one just down the road...

The three-leaded caps used to be somewhat common. Dual capacitors in one package, common negative, usually. I see them frequently in older electronics, usually with a big choke between the two capacitors to make a pi filter for power input. I remember seeing them new in package in a store nearby as recently as the late 90s.

I want one or two of those adjustable power resistors!

[WarSim]

The three-leaded caps used to be somewhat common. Dual capacitors in one package, common negative, usually. I see them frequently in older electronics, usually with a big choke between the two capacitors to make a pi filter for power input. I remember seeing them new in package in a store nearby as recently as the late 90s.

Yes this is true, but that package is still used for dual and single caps. 
They are more for specialty reasons these days. 
On the single caps the third lead is either for shield, inductance reduction, leakage control, thermal, stability, etc.
Features most people don't need therefore don't need to pay extra for.

[Stonent]

Also he seemed to have quite a large supply of Nook E-Ink screens for $1.99 each.
I almost bought one but the pin pitch on the ribbon cable is 10x beyond my ability...
He also had the bottom color screen strips from the nooks for a few dollars.

[Stonent]

I went back today, I got 5 NPN Darlington transistors at $0.19 each, a solder sucker for $3.99, 2 combo binding post/banana receptacles, 2 banana plugs, an Exar XR2206 Function Generator chip $4.75, a small proto board, and medium proto board for $16 total.

Funny that they had Radio Shack branded proto boards for $3.95 when they are $7.00 at Radio Shack.

I asked if they would ever put something on their website and they said they've thought about it but haven't gone through with it yet.  I said that I have a lot of free time in the evenings where they could be taking my money.

They had a 2x24 LCd display that I meant to get for $3.00 but I forgot.

[UPI]

I used to be a frequent customer of Tanner's when I provided service to the ST Microelectronics manufacturing site around the corner. They have quite a selection and are well worth a visit if you are in the area.

It is family owned and operated.

[Stonent]

Back in the late 90s you had STB in Richardson making video cards and SGSThomson (now ST) making the Nvidia Riva128 chips for them. 

I just wish Tanner would put some kind of information on their site, even some store photos, that place is just too cool to not spread the word. I'm about 1/2 hour away from them and my main problem is just time. My week work schedule makes it hard to go there and on the weekends my wife and I usually have family stuff to do. But if I could browse their inventory online, I'd be ordering all sorts of stuff, even if they had an e-mail address, they could give quotes.

Sure I can order 2n2222 transistors from China cheaper but who wants to wait a month?

[rsjsouza]

Tanner Electronics is absolutely awesome! The selection of discretes and passives is really nice, as well as some other almost dead sciences (who sells loudspeakers' cones and coils these days?) and the store brings me back good memories (I was lucky to have two electronics stores close to my home).

I got several things there: several transistors and MOSFETs, 1nF/15kv disc caps, 33000uF/50V chassis mount caps from Chemi-con, an air gap variable capacitor, beefy rectifying bridges (35A/400V) and so on. One of the "souvenirs" I got there is a W607 TO-3 transistor from TI that still used copper on the base of the heatsink... Pretty nice!

Another store here in Dallas that complements Tanner nicely is BG Micro - they are online only, but if you are local you can ask them to hold the order and pick it up yourself (saves some bucks on postage).