In Brazil there were large warehouses in São Paulo near the local “electronics” street, Santa Efigênia (we joked she was the saint patron of electrical engineering).
From those places you could get almost anything, from a tomography machine or a jet engine test stand, all the way to each and every kind of electronic component of every imaginable vintage.
As far as I know, the ecosystem that powered it no longer exists. I got a sizeable chunk of my vintage computer collection there.
> As far as I know, the ecosystem that powered it no longer exists.
I take that back. Going through the place on Google Street View shows it quite vital as late as April 2024. Some of the places that had the most interesting stuff seem closed, but it really depends on the actual day of the week of the photo, as those places had notoriously unreliable opening hours.
Even cooler were the shops near LA filled with the detritus of the aerospace industry. Like, piles of titanium tubing, and big rocket nozzles sitting on the floor.
for a while back in the early 2000s it felt like Weirdstuff Warehouse was getting pallets of surplus gear from failed dot-coms. along with the office chairs/etc.
