Cheap new device to pull capacitors from?

[John Doe]

What's the best inexpensive device at the local megastore to pull
capacitors from? What inexpensive device has the most capacitors?

If not the local megastore, then eBay or wherever.

Looking for a (preferably new) cheap electronics device for the sole
purpose of removing its capacitors.

My interest is noise filtering, decoupling, bypass, that sort of thing.

Thanks.

 

[John Doe]

On second thought... I wonder if used components on fleaBay would be
the best place to get legitimate filter/bypass/decoupling
capacitors, cheap.

What type of devices should I be looking for?
Seems soundcards have a bunch.

Thanks.




I wrote:

What's the best inexpensive device at the local megastore to pull
capacitors from? What inexpensive device has the most capacitors?

If not the local megastore, then eBay or wherever.

Looking for a (preferably new) cheap electronics device for the sole
purpose of removing its capacitors.

My interest is noise filtering, decoupling, bypass, that sort of thing.

Thanks.

 

[default]

On Sun, 9 Dec 2018 09:48:56 -0000 (UTC), John Doe
<always.look@message.header> wrote:

On second thought... I wonder if used components on fleaBay would be
the best place to get legitimate filter/bypass/decoupling
capacitors, cheap.

What type of devices should I be looking for?
Seems soundcards have a bunch.

Thanks.

Buying junk to harvest parts? On the face of it, that sounds
ridiculous. There must be something I'm missing here. Are you
located somewhere where this becomes a feasible option?

There are many surplus shops that specialize in buying up odd lots of
new parts from manufacturers (over-runs, over-stocks, canceled
production). That seems like a better venue, ditto the ebay route
providing you find a good ethical source.

Jameco, Electronic Gold Mine, All Electronics, BGMicro, American
Science and Surplus (sciplus) etc..

If you live near a technological hub there may even surplus shops you
can wander through picking up what you want. That was once the case
in NYC (Canal Street, but it is shut down now) I found several places
in San Diego that are probably still going.

I wrote:

What's the best inexpensive device at the local megastore to pull
capacitors from? What inexpensive device has the most capacitors?

If not the local megastore, then eBay or wherever.

Looking for a (preferably new) cheap electronics device for the sole
purpose of removing its capacitors.

My interest is noise filtering, decoupling, bypass, that sort of thing.

Thanks.

 

[Tom Biasi]

On 12/8/2018 10:56 PM, default wrote:

On Sun, 9 Dec 2018 09:48:56 -0000 (UTC), John Doe
always.look@message.header> wrote:

On second thought... I wonder if used components on fleaBay would be
the best place to get legitimate filter/bypass/decoupling
capacitors, cheap.

What type of devices should I be looking for?
Seems soundcards have a bunch.

Thanks.

Buying junk to harvest parts? On the face of it, that sounds
ridiculous. There must be something I'm missing here. Are you
located somewhere where this becomes a feasible option?

There are many surplus shops that specialize in buying up odd lots of
new parts from manufacturers (over-runs, over-stocks, canceled
production). That seems like a better venue, ditto the ebay route
providing you find a good ethical source.

Jameco, Electronic Gold Mine, All Electronics, BGMicro, American
Science and Surplus (sciplus) etc..

If you live near a technological hub there may even surplus shops you
can wander through picking up what you want. That was once the case
in NYC (Canal Street, but it is shut down now) I found several places
in San Diego that are probably still going.




I wrote:

What's the best inexpensive device at the local megastore to pull
capacitors from? What inexpensive device has the most capacitors?

If not the local megastore, then eBay or wherever.

Looking for a (preferably new) cheap electronics device for the sole
purpose of removing its capacitors.

My interest is noise filtering, decoupling, bypass, that sort of thing.

Thanks.
I really miss Canal Street

 

[default]

On Sun, 9 Dec 2018 12:43:55 -0500, Tom Biasi <tombiasi@optonline.net>
wrote:

On 12/8/2018 10:56 PM, default wrote:
On Sun, 9 Dec 2018 09:48:56 -0000 (UTC), John Doe
always.look@message.header> wrote:

On second thought... I wonder if used components on fleaBay would be
the best place to get legitimate filter/bypass/decoupling
capacitors, cheap.

What type of devices should I be looking for?
Seems soundcards have a bunch.

Thanks.

Buying junk to harvest parts? On the face of it, that sounds
ridiculous. There must be something I'm missing here. Are you
located somewhere where this becomes a feasible option?

There are many surplus shops that specialize in buying up odd lots of
new parts from manufacturers (over-runs, over-stocks, canceled
production). That seems like a better venue, ditto the ebay route
providing you find a good ethical source.

Jameco, Electronic Gold Mine, All Electronics, BGMicro, American
Science and Surplus (sciplus) etc..

If you live near a technological hub there may even surplus shops you
can wander through picking up what you want. That was once the case
in NYC (Canal Street, but it is shut down now) I found several places
in San Diego that are probably still going.




I wrote:

What's the best inexpensive device at the local megastore to pull
capacitors from? What inexpensive device has the most capacitors?

If not the local megastore, then eBay or wherever.

Looking for a (preferably new) cheap electronics device for the sole
purpose of removing its capacitors.

My interest is noise filtering, decoupling, bypass, that sort of thing.

Thanks.
I really miss Canal Street

Me too. My buddy and I would go down to NYC and make a day out of
perusing "radio row." For $5 or so we find some high tech piece of
equipment to adapt to our needs.

I needed some toggle switches and didn't want to spend the $2.50 a
quality switch would cost, down to radio row and I picked up a
aluminum panel with ~100 wired up switches on it for $2.

When I was in the city a couple of years ago I went down to wallow in
nostalgia, there was one hold-out (remember the smell of phenolic
resin plastics and varnish?) all the rest was China Town shops, and
one computer surplus store.

The WW2 battleship memorials have that same odor in their radio rooms.

Remember Lafayette Electronics?

 

[Michael Black]

On Sun, 9 Dec 2018, Tom Biasi wrote:

On 12/8/2018 10:56 PM, default wrote:

I really miss Canal Street

It's been gone so long, most people don't have memories of it, at berst
faded memories.

I only know about it from reading in the magazines, some years after it
was torn down for the World Trade Centre.

But when I first went to buy electronic parts, 1971, I looked in the
yellow
pages, and picked one store, I don't remember why I chose it. And over
time, I came to see that while it wasn't a "Canal Street", there was a
cluster of electronic stores within a few blocks. So Etco, some might
remember it because they morphed into a mail order place aimed at the US
was the store I went to first, in a building with wooden floors, go down
to teh basement and it's jammed with stuff, much of it behind a parts
counter, but magazines, and surplus etc. Even in 1972 I could buy a
Command Set transmitter for ten dollars there.

There was some place nearby that sold transformers and motors, and the one
time we went in the owner snarled at us "what do you want?" and we never
returned, but we weren't the only ones who got that sort of welcome there.
There was Payette Radio, a big parts store, but it also had a ham radio
section, where I drooled over the equipemnt, and bought some magazines.
And there was a "new" place, Corenet Electronics, selling mostly
semiconductors, especially ICs, and kind of promoting itself like a
Poly-Paks, where maybe he did get his stock from.

They were all gone by the end of the decade. Partly I think the
transistion to semiconductors, new places came along that better covered
those, and the stores would have to have complete makeover of their
inventory to be more relevant. But I suspect the rents went up, or if
they owned the buildings the offers too good, so they decided it was time
to close down. That area has been redeveloped since the first time I was
down there.

Some of the other stores, spread around, did live much longer. One even
exists today, but when I went about six years ago, it had been renovated
and seemed aimed at consumers, rather than hobbyists and repairmen. I
think a lot of their stock had been industrial surplus, it was like a
grocery store, with aisles of parts and you'd go up and down with your
basket getting what you wanted. I'm not sure how much of that they still
sell, but if it's there, it's behind the counter. And the wooden floors
are gone.

Michael

 

[Michael Black]

On Sun, 9 Dec 2018, John Doe wrote:

What's the best inexpensive device at the local megastore to pull
capacitors from? What inexpensive device has the most capacitors?

If not the local megastore, then eBay or wherever.

Looking for a (preferably new) cheap electronics device for the sole
purpose of removing its capacitors.

My interest is noise filtering, decoupling, bypass, that sort of thing.

Thanks.

I think you're looking in the wrong place. VCRs, cassette recorders, even
DVD players, old stereo systems, LCD tv sets and monitors, I suppose old
computers, cordless phones, there's lots of consumer electronics being
tossed out, and some of it offers up parts. The more recent the less
likely since the parts will likely be surface mount, and there's not much
you can get out of a recent cellphone, specialized ICs and very large
scale, so relatively few parts, aside from them being surface mount.

All of this can still be found at garage sales, and rummage sales where
they exist (and take electronics). I'm seeing less electronics being
tossed out, people sending their junk to "e-waste recycling" rather than
giving it a second life. Some things will offer more parts than others,
and some things offer better parts for specific things than others.
There was a time about 1995 when I was getting early generation
cellphones, the big clunky kind, for a few dollars, and they had great
parts, full size and recognizable. I think the wave of CRT tv sets and
monitors being discarded is mostly over, I'm not seeing much. They would
have more parts than in LCD sets. And when you find the junk, much of it
might also offer themselves as cases, maybe with a bit of panel to replace
the old. Computer power supplies can be used as is, or teh parts removed
and the cases used for other projects. Parts can be cheap, but hosuing
the projects has always been costly.

Of course, there are endless AC adapters being scrapped, simply because
the owner no longer needs them. A massive source of switching supplies,
make up for the lack of actual transformers, little equipment uses thos
anymore. One time I needed an adaptoer for a Pwerbook 1400, and I think
the second inkjet printer I opened up (those still seem common in the
garbage) provided the needed 24vdc supply, complete on it's own little
board.

Michael

 

[default]

On Sun, 9 Dec 2018 23:15:16 -0500, Michael Black <mblack@pubnix.net>
wrote:

On Sun, 9 Dec 2018, Tom Biasi wrote:

On 12/8/2018 10:56 PM, default wrote:

I really miss Canal Street

It's been gone so long, most people don't have memories of it, at berst
faded memories.

I only know about it from reading in the magazines, some years after it
was torn down for the World Trade Centre.

But when I first went to buy electronic parts, 1971, I looked in the
yellow
pages, and picked one store, I don't remember why I chose it. And over
time, I came to see that while it wasn't a "Canal Street", there was a
cluster of electronic stores within a few blocks. So Etco, some might
remember it because they morphed into a mail order place aimed at the US
was the store I went to first, in a building with wooden floors, go down
to teh basement and it's jammed with stuff, much of it behind a parts
counter, but magazines, and surplus etc. Even in 1972 I could buy a
Command Set transmitter for ten dollars there.

There was some place nearby that sold transformers and motors, and the one
time we went in the owner snarled at us "what do you want?" and we never
returned, but we weren't the only ones who got that sort of welcome there.
There was Payette Radio, a big parts store, but it also had a ham radio
section, where I drooled over the equipemnt, and bought some magazines.
And there was a "new" place, Corenet Electronics, selling mostly
semiconductors, especially ICs, and kind of promoting itself like a
Poly-Paks, where maybe he did get his stock from.

They were all gone by the end of the decade. Partly I think the
transistion to semiconductors, new places came along that better covered
those, and the stores would have to have complete makeover of their
inventory to be more relevant. But I suspect the rents went up, or if
they owned the buildings the offers too good, so they decided it was time
to close down. That area has been redeveloped since the first time I was
down there.

Some of the other stores, spread around, did live much longer. One even
exists today, but when I went about six years ago, it had been renovated
and seemed aimed at consumers, rather than hobbyists and repairmen. I
think a lot of their stock had been industrial surplus, it was like a
grocery store, with aisles of parts and you'd go up and down with your
basket getting what you wanted. I'm not sure how much of that they still
sell, but if it's there, it's behind the counter. And the wooden floors
are gone.

Michael

I visited Canal Street sometime in the 80's and there was one old
store hanging on. Had a lot of nice brass wave guides and the usual
bins of stuff, but the prices were way higher than in my youth (60's).
It was obvious that he hadn't added any new stock in awhile too.

You could buy boards stuffed with transistors in the 60s' and that was
the way to buy them since retail they were still in the dollar range.
Some were quite a bit more expensive than vacuum tubes.

Poly packs was a joke, and rip-off. They advertised "too many to
test, you test em." Somebody had to have tested them because in a
pack of 100 you might find 5 functioning transistors, and those
probably had high leakage.

 

[default]

On Sun, 9 Dec 2018 23:15:16 -0500, Michael Black <mblack@pubnix.net>
wrote:

On Sun, 9 Dec 2018, Tom Biasi wrote:

On 12/8/2018 10:56 PM, default wrote:

I really miss Canal Street

It's been gone so long, most people don't have memories of it, at berst
faded memories.

I only know about it from reading in the magazines, some years after it
was torn down for the World Trade Centre.

But when I first went to buy electronic parts, 1971, I looked in the
yellow
pages, and picked one store, I don't remember why I chose it. And over
time, I came to see that while it wasn't a "Canal Street", there was a
cluster of electronic stores within a few blocks. So Etco, some might
remember it because they morphed into a mail order place aimed at the US
was the store I went to first, in a building with wooden floors, go down
to teh basement and it's jammed with stuff, much of it behind a parts
counter, but magazines, and surplus etc. Even in 1972 I could buy a
Command Set transmitter for ten dollars there.

There was some place nearby that sold transformers and motors, and the one
time we went in the owner snarled at us "what do you want?" and we never
returned, but we weren't the only ones who got that sort of welcome there.
There was Payette Radio, a big parts store, but it also had a ham radio
section, where I drooled over the equipemnt, and bought some magazines.
And there was a "new" place, Corenet Electronics, selling mostly
semiconductors, especially ICs, and kind of promoting itself like a
Poly-Paks, where maybe he did get his stock from.

They were all gone by the end of the decade. Partly I think the
transistion to semiconductors, new places came along that better covered
those, and the stores would have to have complete makeover of their
inventory to be more relevant. But I suspect the rents went up, or if
they owned the buildings the offers too good, so they decided it was time
to close down. That area has been redeveloped since the first time I was
down there.

Some of the other stores, spread around, did live much longer. One even
exists today, but when I went about six years ago, it had been renovated
and seemed aimed at consumers, rather than hobbyists and repairmen. I
think a lot of their stock had been industrial surplus, it was like a
grocery store, with aisles of parts and you'd go up and down with your
basket getting what you wanted. I'm not sure how much of that they still
sell, but if it's there, it's behind the counter. And the wooden floors
are gone.

Michael

BTW are you the Michael Black that had a website with some simple, low
parts count, switching regulators?

 

[default]

On Sun, 9 Dec 2018 23:26:44 -0500, Michael Black <mblack@pubnix.net>
wrote:

On Sun, 9 Dec 2018, John Doe wrote:

What's the best inexpensive device at the local megastore to pull
capacitors from? What inexpensive device has the most capacitors?

If not the local megastore, then eBay or wherever.

Looking for a (preferably new) cheap electronics device for the sole
purpose of removing its capacitors.

My interest is noise filtering, decoupling, bypass, that sort of thing.

Thanks.

I think you're looking in the wrong place. VCRs, cassette recorders, even
DVD players, old stereo systems, LCD tv sets and monitors, I suppose old
computers, cordless phones, there's lots of consumer electronics being
tossed out, and some of it offers up parts. The more recent the less
likely since the parts will likely be surface mount, and there's not much
you can get out of a recent cellphone, specialized ICs and very large
scale, so relatively few parts, aside from them being surface mount.

All of this can still be found at garage sales, and rummage sales where
they exist (and take electronics). I'm seeing less electronics being
tossed out, people sending their junk to "e-waste recycling" rather than
giving it a second life. Some things will offer more parts than others,
and some things offer better parts for specific things than others.
There was a time about 1995 when I was getting early generation
cellphones, the big clunky kind, for a few dollars, and they had great
parts, full size and recognizable. I think the wave of CRT tv sets and
monitors being discarded is mostly over, I'm not seeing much. They would
have more parts than in LCD sets. And when you find the junk, much of it
might also offer themselves as cases, maybe with a bit of panel to replace
the old. Computer power supplies can be used as is, or teh parts removed
and the cases used for other projects. Parts can be cheap, but hosuing
the projects has always been costly.

Of course, there are endless AC adapters being scrapped, simply because
the owner no longer needs them. A massive source of switching supplies,
make up for the lack of actual transformers, little equipment uses thos
anymore. One time I needed an adaptoer for a Pwerbook 1400, and I think
the second inkjet printer I opened up (those still seem common in the
garbage) provided the needed 24vdc supply, complete on it's own little
board.

Michael

Those old compact fluorescent bulbs are good for some high voltage
power transistors ferrites and caps.

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 12/10/18 5:08 AM, default wrote:

On Sun, 9 Dec 2018 23:15:16 -0500, Michael Black <mblack@pubnix.net
wrote:

On Sun, 9 Dec 2018, Tom Biasi wrote:

On 12/8/2018 10:56 PM, default wrote:

I really miss Canal Street

It's been gone so long, most people don't have memories of it, at berst
faded memories.

I only know about it from reading in the magazines, some years after it
was torn down for the World Trade Centre.

But when I first went to buy electronic parts, 1971, I looked in the
yellow
pages, and picked one store, I don't remember why I chose it. And over
time, I came to see that while it wasn't a "Canal Street", there was a
cluster of electronic stores within a few blocks. So Etco, some might
remember it because they morphed into a mail order place aimed at the US
was the store I went to first, in a building with wooden floors, go down
to teh basement and it's jammed with stuff, much of it behind a parts
counter, but magazines, and surplus etc. Even in 1972 I could buy a
Command Set transmitter for ten dollars there.

There was some place nearby that sold transformers and motors, and the one
time we went in the owner snarled at us "what do you want?" and we never
returned, but we weren't the only ones who got that sort of welcome there.
There was Payette Radio, a big parts store, but it also had a ham radio
section, where I drooled over the equipemnt, and bought some magazines.
And there was a "new" place, Corenet Electronics, selling mostly
semiconductors, especially ICs, and kind of promoting itself like a
Poly-Paks, where maybe he did get his stock from.

They were all gone by the end of the decade. Partly I think the
transistion to semiconductors, new places came along that better covered
those, and the stores would have to have complete makeover of their
inventory to be more relevant. But I suspect the rents went up, or if
they owned the buildings the offers too good, so they decided it was time
to close down. That area has been redeveloped since the first time I was
down there.

Some of the other stores, spread around, did live much longer. One even
exists today, but when I went about six years ago, it had been renovated
and seemed aimed at consumers, rather than hobbyists and repairmen. I
think a lot of their stock had been industrial surplus, it was like a
grocery store, with aisles of parts and you'd go up and down with your
basket getting what you wanted. I'm not sure how much of that they still
sell, but if it's there, it's behind the counter. And the wooden floors
are gone.

Michael

I visited Canal Street sometime in the 80's and there was one old
store hanging on. Had a lot of nice brass wave guides and the usual
bins of stuff, but the prices were way higher than in my youth (60's).
It was obvious that he hadn't added any new stock in awhile too.

You could buy boards stuffed with transistors in the 60s' and that was
the way to buy them since retail they were still in the dollar range.
Some were quite a bit more expensive than vacuum tubes.

Poly packs was a joke, and rip-off. They advertised "too many to
test, you test em." Somebody had to have tested them because in a
pack of 100 you might find 5 functioning transistors, and those
probably had high leakage.

I remember when Digi-Key and Poly Paks both advertised in the back of
Electronics Illustrated, selling apparently the same sorts of stuff.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net

 

[Phil Allison]

default wrote:

n

Those old compact fluorescent bulbs are good for some high voltage
power transistors ferrites and caps.

** A few years back, I ordered some 22uF/500V electros from my regular tube amplifier parts supplier.

What arrived looked suspicious and on examination turned out to be 22u,400V electros taken from used CFLs installed in new aluminium cans a with new labels - saying 22,uF/500V.

That's recycling gone too far.



..... Phil

 

[Michael Black]

On Mon, 10 Dec 2018, default wrote:

Those old compact fluorescent bulbs are good for some high voltage
power transistors ferrites and caps.

That's true, and I had my first LED bulb go bad about a month ago. Some
nice LEDs to play with, I cut the bulb part off, it was plastic, but
haven't gotten to the circuit board.

Though I recall reading somewhere someone posting about repairing either
CFL bulbs or LED bulbs by changing some capacitors. I guess the trick
there is to get the casing open in a way that you can put it back
together, not unlike all the ac adapters floating around that have aren't
meant to be opened.

Michael

 

[Michael Black]

On Mon, 10 Dec 2018, default wrote:

BTW are you the Michael Black that had a website with some simple, low
parts count, switching regulators?

No.

It's a common name, there was a time when I'd even bump into "Michael
Blacks" in various newsgroups, "it's my name, but I know I didn't post
that".

Michael

 

[Michael Black]

On Mon, 10 Dec 2018, Phil Hobbs wrote:

Poly packs was a joke, and rip-off. They advertised "too many to
test, you test em." Somebody had to have tested them because in a
pack of 100 you might find 5 functioning transistors, and those
probably had high leakage.


I remember when Digi-Key and Poly Paks both advertised in the back of
Electronics Illustrated, selling apparently the same sorts of stuff.

I don't think so. Poly Paks was around from the early sixties, I think
from reading ads it had a different name to begin with, and were selling
surplus, even in the seventies they'd have stereo amplifiers boards and
calculator boards that obviously had been surplus from manufacturers.

Digi-key started by selling a digital keyer for morse code, and then added
some parts that they sold, eventually getting bigger and bigger. They
always seemed to be selling new parts, first a limited selection to
hobbyists, then as that did well broadening the line, yet still seeming to
be fore hobbyists, and then somewhere along the way they got big.

Michael

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 12/10/18 11:00 PM, Michael Black wrote:

On Mon, 10 Dec 2018, Phil Hobbs wrote:


Poly packs was a joke, and rip-off.  They advertised "too many to
test, you test em."  Somebody had to have tested them because in a
pack of 100 you might find 5 functioning transistors, and those
probably had high leakage.


I remember when Digi-Key and Poly Paks both advertised in the back of
Electronics Illustrated, selling apparently the same sorts of stuff.

I don't think so.  Poly Paks was around from the early sixties, I think
from reading ads it had a different name to begin with, and were selling
surplus, even in the seventies they'd have stereo amplifiers boards and
calculator boards that obviously had been surplus from manufacturers.

<https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Poptronics/70s/1974/Poptronics-1974-09.pdf>

See pp. 97 & 99 of the PDF.

Digi-key started by selling a digital keyer for morse code, and then
added some parts that they sold, eventually getting bigger and bigger.
They always seemed to be selling new parts, first a limited selection to
hobbyists, then as that did well broadening the line, yet still seeming
to be fore hobbyists, and then somewhere along the way they got big.

  Michael

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com