#supplyhouse — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #supplyhouse, aggregated by home.social.
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I can safely say that it's been a while since #DigiKey sold #resistors in pre-packed bags of 5 with included card labels. As their own brand. Made in Taiwan.
Or called themselves "Digi-Key Corporation".
More seriously, I found a bag of #components left over from my senior year of school, when we did our big final project. Mine was a computer-controlled slot machine. Components were seriously expensive then; I organized a group buy with 4 or 5 of my classmates through "Digi-Key", partly because they were cheaper than the local suppliers (see previous story about the "Two Weeks Ten Bucks" guys), but also because we could get quantity price breaks on stuff that was common between our #projects, like the 1 kΩ resistors. IIRC, the resistors cost about $0.30 each in the 5-packs, but the bag of 200 was *way* cheaper - about half that, I think.
These were ordered in 1997, so almost 30 years ago. In addition to #vintage resistors, I found ZTX549 PNP #transistors (still in stock at DigiKey today!), MJE2955T #PNP transistors (also still in stock!), 3 different brands of 741 #opamps, including made-in-Japan and made-in-Malaysia #NEC, TI ones from Taiwan and the Philippines, as well as #TI TL081CP and LM318P from Taiwan. Also a bunch of 74-series logic #chips and some weirder stuff, like a #Motorola MC14412, which is essentially a 0-600 bps (~baud) modem-in-a-chip.
So if you need some vintage components, hit me up 😉
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I can safely say that it's been a while since #DigiKey sold #resistors in pre-packed bags of 5 with included card labels. As their own brand. Made in Taiwan.
Or called themselves "Digi-Key Corporation".
More seriously, I found a bag of #components left over from my senior year of school, when we did our big final project. Mine was a computer-controlled slot machine. Components were seriously expensive then; I organized a group buy with 4 or 5 of my classmates through "Digi-Key", partly because they were cheaper than the local suppliers (see previous story about the "Two Weeks Ten Bucks" guys), but also because we could get quantity price breaks on stuff that was common between our #projects, like the 1 kΩ resistors. IIRC, the resistors cost about $0.30 each in the 5-packs, but the bag of 200 was *way* cheaper - about half that, I think.
These were ordered in 1997, so almost 30 years ago. In addition to #vintage resistors, I found ZTX549 PNP #transistors (still in stock at DigiKey today!), MJE2955T #PNP transistors (also still in stock!), 3 different brands of 741 #opamps, including made-in-Japan and made-in-Malaysia #NEC, TI ones from Taiwan and the Philippines, as well as #TI TL081CP and LM318P from Taiwan. Also a bunch of 74-series logic #chips and some weirder stuff, like a #Motorola MC14412, which is essentially a 0-600 bps (~baud) modem-in-a-chip.
So if you need some vintage components, hit me up 😉
-
I can safely say that it's been a while since #DigiKey sold #resistors in pre-packed bags of 5 with included card labels. As their own brand. Made in Taiwan.
Or called themselves "Digi-Key Corporation".
More seriously, I found a bag of #components left over from my senior year of school, when we did our big final project. Mine was a computer-controlled slot machine. Components were seriously expensive then; I organized a group buy with 4 or 5 of my classmates through "Digi-Key", partly because they were cheaper than the local suppliers (see previous story about the "Two Weeks Ten Bucks" guys), but also because we could get quantity price breaks on stuff that was common between our #projects, like the 1 kΩ resistors. IIRC, the resistors cost about $0.30 each in the 5-packs, but the bag of 200 was *way* cheaper - about half that, I think.
These were ordered in 1997, so almost 30 years ago. In addition to #vintage resistors, I found ZTX549 PNP #transistors (still in stock at DigiKey today!), MJE2955T #PNP transistors (also still in stock!), 3 different brands of 741 #opamps, including made-in-Japan and made-in-Malaysia #NEC, TI ones from Taiwan and the Philippines, as well as #TI TL081CP and LM318P from Taiwan. Also a bunch of 74-series logic #chips and some weirder stuff, like a #Motorola MC14412, which is essentially a 0-600 bps (~baud) modem-in-a-chip.
So if you need some vintage components, hit me up 😉
-
I can safely say that it's been a while since #DigiKey sold #resistors in pre-packed bags of 5 with included card labels. As their own brand. Made in Taiwan.
Or called themselves "Digi-Key Corporation".
More seriously, I found a bag of #components left over from my senior year of school, when we did our big final project. Mine was a computer-controlled slot machine. Components were seriously expensive then; I organized a group buy with 4 or 5 of my classmates through "Digi-Key", partly because they were cheaper than the local suppliers (see previous story about the "Two Weeks Ten Bucks" guys), but also because we could get quantity price breaks on stuff that was common between our #projects, like the 1 kΩ resistors. IIRC, the resistors cost about $0.30 each in the 5-packs, but the bag of 200 was *way* cheaper - about half that, I think.
These were ordered in 1997, so almost 30 years ago. In addition to #vintage resistors, I found ZTX549 PNP #transistors (still in stock at DigiKey today!), MJE2955T #PNP transistors (also still in stock!), 3 different brands of 741 #opamps, including made-in-Japan and made-in-Malaysia #NEC, TI ones from Taiwan and the Philippines, as well as #TI TL081CP and LM318P from Taiwan. Also a bunch of 74-series logic #chips and some weirder stuff, like a #Motorola MC14412, which is essentially a 0-600 bps (~baud) modem-in-a-chip.
So if you need some vintage components, hit me up 😉
-
I can safely say that it's been a while since #DigiKey sold #resistors in pre-packed bags of 5 with included card labels. As their own brand. Made in Taiwan.
Or called themselves "Digi-Key Corporation".
More seriously, I found a bag of #components left over from my senior year of school, when we did our big final project. Mine was a computer-controlled slot machine. Components were seriously expensive then; I organized a group buy with 4 or 5 of my classmates through "Digi-Key", partly because they were cheaper than the local suppliers (see previous story about the "Two Weeks Ten Bucks" guys), but also because we could get quantity price breaks on stuff that was common between our #projects, like the 1 kΩ resistors. IIRC, the resistors cost about $0.30 each in the 5-packs, but the bag of 200 was *way* cheaper - about half that, I think.
These were ordered in 1997, so almost 30 years ago. In addition to #vintage resistors, I found ZTX549 PNP #transistors (still in stock at DigiKey today!), MJE2955T #PNP transistors (also still in stock!), 3 different brands of 741 #opamps, including made-in-Japan and made-in-Malaysia #NEC, TI ones from Taiwan and the Philippines, as well as #TI TL081CP and LM318P from Taiwan. Also a bunch of 74-series logic #chips and some weirder stuff, like a #Motorola MC14412, which is essentially a 0-600 bps (~baud) modem-in-a-chip.
So if you need some vintage components, hit me up 😉
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There's also the case where you live in a place that doesn't have a large enough population to support a specialty seller of some sort. My city used to have two different electronics supply houses (which exist mainly to serve the trades, but they'll usually tolerate hobbyists coming in to buy stuff), but that was many years ago, when there were still tons of local repair shops fixing microwaves and TVs and stereos and everything else, so there was lots of demand for electronic components and supplies.
Most of those things are now treated as disposable items. The repair shops are long gone. There's not enough demand in my city - actually, in my whole province - to support such a supply house.
So hobbyists and people who still do repairs have to order from somewhere. The closest "local" supply house is in a city that's a 7-hour drive away. So I can order from them - but it's a pain, because they don't have any way to see their stocklist or order online. It's "phone them and hope they're not too busy to tell you which of these 17 diode models they happen to have in stock".
Or I can go online and order from Newark/Element14/Farnell (all the same company), or DigiKey, or Mouser, or Amazon, or Ebay, or AliExpress. And all of these will be cheaper as well as more convenient.
"Shop local" just ain't possible for all things if you don't live in a city like NYC or London or Frankfurt etc.