so i did something totally insane. the local electronics store was closing down and so i (and two friends) purchased THEIR ENTIRE STOCK OF INTEGRATED CIRCUITS. and today i finally finished organizing my share into these 12 cabinets.
a couple of statistics: there are 3,622 different part numbers and a total of 72,108 parts in this collection.
(before being split, this means there were over 216,000 parts that we had to sort through manually!)
these parts started out at HSC Electronics (aka Halted) in Santa Clara and were collected over a period of 40 years.
HSC was on Ryder street for many, many years, but they had to move in ~2016. the building was demolished in May 2017.
HSC/Halted has had several other locations over the years, but served as a steady source of parts for hobbyists and engineers. many famous individuals bought things here.
unfortunately, the company had to shut down their retail outlet in 2019.
@tubetime I spent a lot of time in that building…