Last week I was in training in the Silicon Valley in California so I took some time to meet with my teammate Hartti Suomela to do some team building. When Hartti gave me the choice of where to go after some gathering of information on the internet, I chose Weird Stuff in Sunnyvale California. After questioning my sanity and admitting that he had never heard of the place Hartti reluctantly trekked off with me to see the great unknown.

 

WeirdStuff is a showroom and warehouse for all the flotsam and jetsam that is discarded in the high tech industrial world of Silicon Valley. From vintage 1990 computers to barrels full of miscellaneous nuts and bolts (which sell by the pound) all things salvaged from business close outs and other salvage end up at WeirdStuff. If you need an 8 foot glass server rack, or a shell for a Donkey Kong arcade game. Do you need a 1/2” tape backup or a copy of Amish Utilities for Windows 2.0 this is the place to be. A chip tester, an oscilloscope, or a really great 10 foot high “you are here” kiosk almost everything high tech related is for sale. From a box full of corded and one wireless phones to a Sybase back up system it was hard to find something that stumped both Hartti and I.

 

Hartti and I were typical WeirdStuff customers, just people that have heard of the place and were there out of curiosity. Luckily for me I had to fly home or the trunk of the car may have been full of spare parts before I left Monday afternoon. Other store browsers were electronic hobbyist trying to find parts to build a home robot or fix an old computer for the kids. If you needed a resister or miniature motor or power supply here was a great place to get it. Another large segment of the stores business is lawyers. Not that lawyers are known as electronic nuts but they investigate in order to get patent rights. Was there an older version; is the new device you have just a rehash of someone else’s idea? All is very interesting and WeirdStuff proved not to be so weird and mostly just stuff. If you aren’t in the San Francisco area you can check it out on the internet. But there is nothing like picking up a 15 year old piece of computer history in your hands and saying I remember this.

 

Ron