RS is great, all sorts of bits and pieces, not only electrical stuff. Could browse there for ages ‘cos I’m weird like that. Usually next-day free delivery as well.
Cambridge used to have an amazing little shop selling just about any electrical component. 100s of boxes all full of paper bags with components in them..
[url=https://flic.kr/p/fyMp5e]Gee’s of Cambridge[/url] by Howard G, on Flickr
Sadly, gutted by fire a few years back and now a burnt out wreck rotting away…
If I’m impatient, Amazon Prime. Otherwise whichever big online shop has what I want for the best price – normally CPC (if you can get a trade account the free delivery threshold is very low)
Like others Cpc/Farnell RS but if I’m just after one or two minor components ebay as often postage is lower when you are only buying one or two quids worth.
I vaguely remember a magazine, Everyday Electronics, from the 80s?
Anyway, in the small pages in the back you could pay a modest fee eg £15 and receive a random bundle of 2000 components (random selection), which I did once.
It used to be that none of the big firms would sell to the general public, even at their trade counters, but these days they all do…
So RS, Farnel/CPC, Digikey, Mouser… the pricing can vary quite a lot between them, so often worth chechlking them all, and minimum order price for free delivery isn’t too bad these days…
Octopart can be useful for quickly comparing prices and availability for a known manufacturers part number, no idea if you can add a whole list of items though?
Cricklewood Electronics used to supply the parts for many of my electronics creations during the 1990’s, it looks like they’re still trading.
Happy memories, I might have to dust off the soldering iron 😄
I was just going to suggest if you’re around north London. I am not around there anymore but bought stuff ~8years ago.
Such a hard thing to stock as a shop as so many variables and whenever any items I’d redesigned it will be redesigned as smd to minimise manufacturing as nd component costs it’s really only the odd old industrial stuff that is worth repairing now. 🙁
Ebay has been pretty good for small orders of components like this. Problem is postage at the moment so bite the bullet and get a selection box from Amazon Prime.
I loved that shop, remember fixing my cordless landline phone with a ni-cad battery pack from there. Pre-internet things like that were almost impossible to get a hold of.
Shop closed about 10 12 years ago (I think).
I left about 25 years ago, even then the business was over 60 years old.
Sad times when it closed, difficult business as there was over 8000 stock lines.
Latterly they sold DJ equipment which delayed the inevitable for a few years. I think RS components & Farnell had already taken the Business Customers.
Fond memories of the place we tried to help customers as much as we could and help them repair things (hopefully things will return to this mindset someday)
Well I chose Hobbytronics and they were very good.
I got four ICs (2×555, 1xMCU, 1x opto-isolator) delivered for under a tenner. Ordered Thursday, delivered this morning.
Good communication and well packaged and labelled.
I@m not making anything in particular Zilog. I just want to get encyclopedically knowledgeable about a few classic ICs and build a few simple circuits with each one.
Cool, did all that at Uni but it was a long time ago and forgotten everything now 😂 I just use microcontrollers these days & so it all in software, the new-ish Pi Pico is awesome and under £4 if you want to check it out 😀
555’s started me into electronics. Did a degree, did stuff with FPGA for the film industry and now run a robotics and AI group at Intel. It’s interesting how far 0’s and 1’s can take you. 👍