End of And Era

 The end of the electronic shops in Silicon Valley. 

All now Long dead. 

   The end of Frys. 
almost unimaginable, this place was Amazing

 Statue of Nikola Tesla at the Freemont Fry's store. 

It used be be filled this this sort of stuff. 

Digital Audio Playback - 1987

Digital Audio playback from EPROM , older version for Sound Effects Car Horn

555 Timer, 2x 74LS373 Counters, and 74LS00 quad Nand , 74LS32 quad XOR

super simple tesla coil, no sparks, but it can light up a bulb.

Super quick and dirty, this was some plastic tube off some broken toy, 

just attached to a gear motor to  do the windings. 

I think they call it a slayer circuit.  I have no idea what it's oscillating at.  I am almost scared to ask, probably a few Mhz and would upset the fcc types..  

       So I gave a talk and put the light bulb in my mouth and lit it.  Al la, Uncle Fester, and nobody in the room of 100+ got the reference.   I don't think they ever posted the video even. 

 

Digital Audio playback from EPROM 1987

 

Atari Joystick Interface for original Macintosh.

 

Here is where it get's interesting.     When I first arrive at Foothill College and connected with my first group of Silicon Valley computer nerds, we ended up talking about the lack of proper Joysticks for Game play on the Apple Mac's. 

I ran down to RadioShack , Bought some parts, started building and my next visit back to the lab a few days later I had a worked device.  

"Do we have a Mac I can test with? I don't have one and I have no way to see if it's working or not"

That weekend I received a Call from Dr. Prionas at Stanford Radiation Oncology, He had spoken with someone teaching at Foothill and wanted to know if I could come by for an Interview.  I spend the next 5.5 years there till posting the Intel 386 port of BSD unix derailed things 

http://www.dnull.com/stanford/

 Parallel Inputs to Serial Data Stream: No CPU

http://www.dnull.com/design/

Audio Byte - Parallel Port R2R Audio Adapter, Photos of Prototypes.

http://www.dnull.com/zebraresearch/

https://github.com/johnsokol/AudioByte

  These we 44Khz 8bit digital recorders, the small PCB one plugged in to my home made Eprom programmer and used it Digital I/O lines on my TRS80 Color Computer.

 These were Aluminum jigs I made to hold the 18 resistors in place while we soldered them together without a PCB.  We made 3000 units this way. 

These 18 Resistors formed an R-2R network.  In my case I chose 50K Ohm and 100K Ohm.

Silicon Valley Local Electronics Resources.

Work Spaces

HackerDojo

http://www.hackerdojo.com/

3350 Thimas rd. Santa Clara
599 Fairchild Dr, Mountain View, CA 94043 moved

Guest Free

Members 24 Hours Access

TechShop

San Jose

http://www.techshop.ws/ts_sanjose.html
300 South 2nd Street, San Jose, CA 95113  Phone (408) 916-4144

Redwood City / Menlo Park

http://www.techshop.ws/ts_menlo_park.html
2415 Bay Road. Redwood City, CA 94063 Phone (650) 521-9027

Electronic Component shops

Fry's

http://www.frys.com/
Some Robotics Kits, and a poorly stocked selection of electronics. 

Anchor

http://anchor-electronics.com/
2040 Walsh Avenue
Santa Clara, CA 95050
(408) 727-3693 • fax 408-727-4424 • M-F 7:30-4 SAT 10-3
Good selcection of small parts.

Alltronics

http://www.alltronics.com/
2761 Scott Blvd, Santa Clara, CA 95050
(408) 778-3868
Cant find store. 

Weird Stuff

http://www.weirdstuff.com/
384 W Caribbean Dr, Sunnyvale, CA 94089

HSC Halted Specialties

http://www.halted.com/
3051 Corvin Dr. Santa Clara  (moved 12/2015) 
Good selection of small parts.

Grainger Industrial Supply

1190 Kern Ave (Near Lawrence Express way and 101, frys's) 
(408) 470-1710
Industrial and electrical.

Excess Solutions

http://www.excesssolutions.com/
1555 S 7th st. San Jose   408-262-3900
Good selection of small parts.

Jameco

And by mail order
http://www.jameco.com/
1355 Shoreway Road
Belmont, CA 94002

Hobby Shops

They have motor's and servo's.

Aeromicro

Well-stocked hobby shop specializing in model airplanes, helicopters, gliders & cars.
2090 Duane Ave, Santa Clara, CA 95054 Phone:(408) 496-6699
Fatshark FPV

Drones Plus

2060 Duane Ave, Santa Clara, CA 95054 Phone:(408) 628-1258
FPV Gear, DJI 

Sheldons Hobbies

2130 Trade Zone Blvd, San Jose, CA 95131
Large store showcasing a range of remote-control vehicles & equipment, toys, model kits & rockets.