I just started doing electronics stuffs a few months ago - Frys will get you the basics (breadboard, resistors, LEDs, etc.) but for ICs it's pretty hit-or-miss - half the stuff on the racks is sold out and most of it isn't terribly useful. Most of the Radio Shacks are even less useful, as the ones I've managed to find are tiny mall boutiques that sell mostly cameras and computer parts, with perhaps one lonely rack of electronic components.
I'd recommend ordering an Arduino and picking up breadboard / resistors ( 100-ish ohms and 300-ish ohms ) / LEDs from Frys and start working through the tutorials, once you're done with that you should have enough of an idea of what you need to order more specific parts from Digikey or Mouser. If you're willing to do some tedious sorting, it can be quite cost-effective to purchase bags of random resistors / capacitors / etc. and sort them yourself - the magic term for googling these grab bags seems to be "<X> assortment". Also, Electronics Goldmine.com (http://www.goldmine-elec-products.com) has lots of bags of cheap random crap, some useful some not. -tanjent On Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 12:52 PM, Justin Martenstein <[email protected] > wrote: > > I'm thinking about starting a weekend project playing around with some > circuits, but I have NO parts. Any recommendations on a good place to > go to get the basics: a breadboard, some wire, components, etc? Radio > Shacks? Frye's? > > -- > Justin Martenstein > [email protected] > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Website: http://saturdayhouse.org/ Post: [email protected] Unsubscribe: [email protected] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
