Comments on: On buying components

By: Yaron S

Yaron S — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 18:19:57 +0000

I don’t have the energy to retype my now-gone comment.

so in short:
1) dodgy far-east ebay sellers
and
http://www.goldmine-elec.com/

By: Yuval

Yuval — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 18:17:39 +0000

you might be surprised, but the answer might be ebay.
I went on a shopping spree a few months ago and am well kitted for several
years for pennies. there are these dodgy far-east sellers with all sorts of stuff.
I’ve been able to source lots of SMT / throughhole IC’s / capacitors / resistors / FET parts, as long as they are jellybean you can probably find them for very cheaply and shipping is usually free (if slow).
All my orders have arrived as described, although there is a known problem of fake components. outside of one order of yet to be tested FET’s which *look* fake, it’s worked
out great for me.

also, if you’re in the US, http://www.goldmine-elec.com might fit the bill.

what happaned to the podcast?!?

By: salsaman

salsaman — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 23:03:50 +0000

Agreed top to bottom– websites’ designs suck, Radio Shack is useless, and Sparkfun and Adafruit can’t make money offering multipacks of resistors etc.

Futurlec might be what you’re looking for. Their customer service can seem odd and shipping can take a while, but their prices are great and they offer some handy “value packs” of resistors, caps, transistors, etc:
http://www.futurlec.com/ValuePacks.shtml

My question is: where can I find SMD packs like this??

By: Jai

Jai — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 12:01:16 +0000

I buy from futurlec when I'm not in a hurry. They can take a while to ship if they don't have a part in stock, and sometimes they won't actually tell you what part they're waiting on, so you have to chase them to find out, and then ask them to ship everything else rather than hold up the whole order. But they're cheap, and they have grab-bags. Don't know what the shipping to the US is like, though, for time or money.