Assessing current stock

Having decided to embark on this voyage — or at the very least, seriously investigate the feasibility of it — I dug out all my old electronics stuff that’s been sat in a draw for over half a decade. This, it turns out, amounts to… well, not a lot of anything useful.

As you’d probably expect, it’s all very old and dusty. Just look at the colour of that breadboard!

I’ve also got a random assortment of LEDs; different colours, shapes, sizes, voltages. Most of them of unknown specifications.

I also have some antique 74xx-series ICs.

Some of these I’m not even sure what they are!

I also have a random hodge-podge of stripboards. Different shapes and sizes, some of it comparatively new, some of it corroded to all hell. I didn’t even realise it came in different pitches.

I also have various other mystery meat; wires, resistors, various kinds of solder in varying states of decay, all sorts of things. It’s all potentially useful, but most of it is pretty ancient now. Probably most of it wants replacing completely.

Online research

Given the state of my current equipment, I’m going to need to replace some / most of it. For that matter, one of the defining qualities of a computer is that it requires a lot of components to build! So I’m going to need to find somewhere I can purchase fairly large quantities of stuff at reasonable prices.

Maplin used to be my go-to place to get electronic components. Unfortunately, Maplin degenerated from a components shop into just another white-box shifting company. And then went broke. Frankly, seeing the sharp deterioration of their customer service and the complete decimation of their parts inventory, I was glad to see them go under.

Basically, there was a time when if a piece of electronics broke, you would try to repair it. But nobody does that any more. If the LED on your TV stops working, don’t even attempt to fit a new one in there (it’s probably surface-mount anyway), just throw the entire TV away and buy a new one. It’ll probably be higher spec anyway.

It’s a bit like what happened with clothing. It used to be that if the button fell off your shirt, you’d try to sew it back on. But with ASDA selling brand new shirts for £3 each, why bother learning to sew? Consequently, nobody does that any more. John Lewis used to have an entire department dedicated to needles, cotton, buttons, ribbons, zips, elastic, and so on. Today they have a small cupboard burried away on the 3rd floor where nobody goes.

But I digress…

As far as I know, there are no highstreet shops that sell electronic components. (If you know differently, feel free to let me know. No, I don’t care about America, I live in the UK.) Clearly I’m going to have to look online.

Last time I visited Maplin as a teenager, a box of resistors or something was reasonably expensive. Not devestatingly expensive, but certainly not that cheap. I was pleasently surprised to find a number of online sites seem to be selling components at really quite reasonable prices. Unfortunately 90% of them only sell to America. However, I did eventually discover that both RS Components and Farnell sell in the UK, to non-trade customers.

The RS Components website is faster and easier to navigate. However, Fernell’s website, although increadibly slow, has a vast product range, and actually somewhat better prices too. Eventually, I signed up for an account with Fernell and started ordering stuff.

My very first purchase was a rather expensive bunch power supply and some breadboard. With this, I hoped to be able to try out some of my existing components. I quickly learned, however, that I could purchase 100 LEDs for a mere £3, in any shape, voltage or colour I want (unless it’s blue). Why try to work with the mystery meat LEDs I have in stock when I can buy more LEDs than it is humanly possible to use for £3?

Seeing that most of the things I want to buy cost mere pence per unit, I decided to throw out all my existing equipment and buy only new items, with datasheets and so on. Even stripboard isn’t all that expensive.

So now I know it’s feasible, I started researching what various types of components cost and trying to decide exactly what I’m going to build.