Electronics
- Ada Fruit
- Hobby oriented mostly microcontroller stuff.
- All Electronics
- Alas -- a good store, going out of business (July 2023.) Lots of surplus
stuff. Some of the best small robot motors around. Get it while you can!
- Anchor Electronics
- A rather traditional surplus dealer in silicon valley. Apparently a staple of
the area. Very good reputation. Some hard to find items. The couple of times
I have dealt with them has gone well.
- Chatt Radio
- Amateur radio equipment. Just found out about them.
- Dan's Small Parts and Kits
- Various RF stuff. He has the infamous 2n4416s. Among other groovy stuff for QRP work.
- Digikey
- Big Name, Big Time, full line
distributor that is also hobbyist friendly.
- Electronic Goldmine
- Miscellaneous surplus stuff. Prices not great. Large selection. Some
really good deals sometimes.
- Fair Radio Sales
- Electronic military surplus. Interesting selection of old military and
some commercial equipment. Been around since 1947.
- GigaParts
- Retail "chain" for mostly amateur radio equipment
- Hatchery Electronics
- Provider of my
"Ten Commandments of Electronics" sheet.
Hatchery Electronics
Rick Curl, Chief Engineer
Product Design -- Research -- Development
Computer-Aided Schematic Capture -- Computer Aided Printed Circuit Layout
PO box 1445
Pinson, AL 35126
hatchery.electronics@gmail.com
- Herbach Rademan Company
- Miscellaneous surplus stuff. Motors and industrial stuff. Some electronics.
- Jameco Electronics
- A very wide selection
of electronic components. Not a very deep selection. Often dont have the
"latest and greatest" but they have most of what a hobbyist would want.
Great prices and great service. Very hobbyist friendly.
- Kits and Parts -- The Toroid King
- Selection varies frequently. Some good RF / radio stuff. Lots of toroids and
parts for building radios. Some kits. Small operation. Very good service. Not
polished, but nice website. Their toroid calculator
is simply awesome.
- Mouser Electronics
- The other Big Name, Big
Time, full line distributor that is hobbyist friendly. If it is currently being
made, either Mouser or Digikey probably has it. Both are very good to deal with.
- Quest Components
- New parts distributor. Don't know much about them.
- RF Parts Company
- Lots and lots of stuff for anyone playing with RF. Not sure I have ever
bought from them. Wide selection.
- SkyCraft Surplus
- Based near NASA in Florida with some occasional space-related stuff.
Some nice meters and transformers, as well as various other stuff.
- Sparkfun Electronics
- The "cool"
place to buy electronic parts. Hobbyist oriented. Sell the most popular
components, but focus more on modules and kits. Lots of good tutorials.
Good pricing on most items.
- Tayda Electronics
- Good hobbyist dealer. Apparently Chinese with a warehouse in the U.S., they
carry a fairly large selection of parts a hobbyist would want. Many parts. Most of the
currently popular items and interesting parts.
My experience is that shipping is typically 1 to 2
weeks. Great prices and very good products. Highly recommended.
- Unicorn Electronics
- One of the very few surplus dealers left. They have a lot of old, hard to
find items. For instance, 74hc181s! Good service. Decent prices.
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Magazines
- Circuit Cellar
- Started by Steve Ciarcia from his Circuit Cellar column in Byte. In depth,
engineer level embedded projects and information. "Merged" with the
European Elektor magazine a few years ago and lost several authors, quality
declined, price went WAY up, and they started business practices I didnt
like. I dropped and never renewed my subscription when they started making
rude, harassing phone calls and telling me I said I was going to do something I
never said trying to get me to renew. YMMV.
- Elektor
- Never read it. Probably never will. See Circuit Cellar above. Very
popular in Europe, apparently.
- Nuts and Volts
- General, hobby oriented electronics magazine. Over 30 years running. Bought
out the other hobby magazines when they folded.
- Servo
- Nuts and Volts sister robotics magazine. Similar to and shares authors with
N&V.
- World Radio History archive
- Humongous archive of magazines and books on radio and electronics.
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Hardware, Software, programming, architecture, design, whatever related to computers.
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I started working with computers in 1979. A lot of what is considered retro now
is what I grew up on. I am interested in all things old-computing. For people
who have never used a computer less than 100 MHz and 256 MB of RAM, there is a
lot to learn. There are a lot of lessons to learn from looking at how things
were done in less than 64K of RAM at 2 MHz. Plus, it's just plain interesting.
The history of how we got here is fascinating.
- Old Computers
- The first place to check when looking at old personal computers. They have
a large number in their museum, with lots of information. Links to other sites
with more information on specific models.
- Retro Technology
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- Retro Archive
- Lots of old computer (more than 10 years old) stuff. Mostly software, with
a large collection of CP/M stuff.
- The Unofficial CP/M web site
- Officially sanctioned, but "unofficial" web site CP/M and Digital Research
software. Source and binary code of various Digital Research software and related
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- Retro Computing
- A lot of information, mostly early personal computers up through the 90s.
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There are a lot of sites dealing with electronics and robotics. Here are some of the
best.
- Dead :-(
- Once upon a time there was a REALLY good site for robot building. Alas, it was
sold to a -- not wonderful -- company (they've already threatened to sue me
once for posting threatening and harassing emails I received from the CEO(
- AVR Freaks
- AVR Freaks is a great resource for anyone using Atmel's line of AVR processors.
A lot of the members are Atmel employees or professional engineers using AVRs. It
is mostly a high level site, and if you ask amateurish questions they better be well
thought out and researched. You can get a lot of good information without ever asking
any questions by looking through the archives.
-
PCB Design Tutorial
- The best PCB design document I have EVER seen. Very comprehensive, yet easy to
read. Read lightly through it at first to get started. Come back often to pick
up stuff you missed the first time. Download and keep it handy whenever you are
doing a layout.
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- bitsavers.org
- VERY extensive documentation archive of computer equipment. There are also
software, communications, components, and test equipment sections. Constantly
being added to.
- Boat Anchor Manual Archive
- Large collection of mostly radio (amateur) and test equipment manuals.
Frequently updated.
- Manuals Lib manuals library
- Manuals for all sorts of thing. &apos nuff said.
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Some of my friends, family, and coworkers have websites that may be interesting. I am
also including here other peoples sites if they are interesting.
Family
- Elisa
- My lovely, wonderful wife. She sells real estate. If you need to buy or sell a
house in the Clarksville, TN area, you can't do better. Of course, I'm not biased or anything.
- Christana
- Christana, my multi-talented daughter. Astronautical Engineer / flight controller
for NASA. Plays flute, guitar, and piano. Draws and
paints beautiful pictures. Creates sculpture. Writes wonderful, creative stories.
Makes things. Runs track.
- Jacob
- Jacob, my wild son. Best motorcycle mechanic I have ever seen. Mechanical genious.
Loves anything that shoots or blows up (wonder where he gets that?). His gun
collection makes the national guard envious. Loves You Tube. Builds and
fixes things. Weightlifter. Guess I better be nice to him! Will be a GREAT engineer
once he realizes that is his destiny. Great man. Often sets me straight when I veer
from the right path.
Friends and Coworkers
- Aly Farahat
- Aly is one of the smartest people I've ever met. He has a BS in Electrical Engineering,
a MS in Computer Engineering, and a PhD in Computer Science. Now he's working on Masters in
Mathematics. Has done some very impressive research, which you can read about on his site.
He also is a talented piano player. I enjoy working with him and learning from him.
He even makes me feel good by asking MY advice and opinions!
Other People
- Don Lancaster's Guru's Lair
- RIP: Don passed away in July 2023
Mr Lancaster is one of the true pioneers and very prolific. I have learned an
awful lot from him and been inspired countless times. His books are timeless classics.
If you can't find inspiration or something new to learn on his website you
need to change hobbies. You must check it out.