Vintage surplus electronics mega-warehouse
Chris sez, "Lewis E. Cearly Jr., Proprietor of Nortex Electronics (a huge vintage electronics store in Fort Worth, TX) passed away last month. This place is being 'reconstituted,' but they've got a cool eBay store." There's 25 screens' worth of illustrated vintage surplus electronics warehouse pr0n here. Commence drooling. Link (Thanks, Chris!)
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Now that's a blast from the past. I have fond memories of visiting Nortex and other Fort Worth area surplus shops when I was a child. My father, my brothers, and I would go there on our semi-annual gadget hunts. What a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon!
On one particular trip we found an Autonetics D-17, the guidance processor from a Minuteman I. It was a thing of beauty -- discrete components (no ICs back then) with dozens of circuit boards fanning out from a central core. It looked vaguely like a toy Cray I.
I had no real use for it, but I wanted it. I still kick myself for not scraping the necessary funds together. Attach a piece of glass to the top, and it would have made a dandy coffee table.
Back then (early/mid 70's), Fort Worth had a number of electronic surplus shops, but most seem to have disappeared. I really miss the smell of these places. Surplus electronic shops have a distinctive aroma that's probably some toxic combination of burned capacitors, broken phenolic boards, and years of grease and dirt accumulation.
Blue skies, Mr Cearley.
There's a place similar to this in North Hollywood, CA called Norton Sellers although they tend to specialize in jet and rocket parts. Great place though. I had the privilege of being on a crew filming there once and got to see their vast warehouse in the back of the store. All kinds of crazy weird electronics stuff.
I'm busy. I dare not even look...
I went there about 3 months ago because I'd heard he was getting ill. He was in good spirits and for the few hours I was there a steady stream of the local radio club guys would come in and check on him.
Nortex was unreal, and it did have the 'smell' of electronics history. I've got crates of odd hardware I picked up for future circuitbending and hacking from there.
RIP Lewis!