When I was a broke kid in late 80's the place to scrounge for PC parts was Boeing surplus in Kent, WA. Computer parts were dirt cheap as they upgraded systems in their offices. It was a great way to learn how to build a working system and troubleshoot. When RE-PC opened in the 90's it was quite a step up, and that was the place to go if I needed something specific. But at Boeing surplus you never knew what else you'd find in there, it went way beyond computers. It closed in 2007 and was a real loss to the community in my opinion.
When gramps had better things to do than kiddo watch he drug you to the Boeing Surplus Store circa 1980. I was living in south Bellevue when it closed (not Factoria ...insert Almost Live Joke). Sadness.
I haven't been more than a couple times since I was a pre grade school kid in the early 80s and I still have dreams about it. Dad bought a panel van and converted it for passengers, with airplane seats in the back for us kids
Loved Boeing surplus..1 mile from my home at the time spent many hours there. Re-PC in Tukwila I used to buy old Apple SCSI drives for my Amiga's, Needed a lot of drives for the BBS :)
My dad bought one of those PCs from the boeing surplus and I took it apart. There were probably 40 screws haha. I didn't have it in my to put it back together. My dad wasn't very happy but I sure did learn how things were put together.
Hey! I was in Seattle at Sakura con and had to take a stop off and go to RE-PC because of your video. I ended up walking out with a Dell dimension Pentium 2 machine. Thanks so much!
My only knock with RE-PC is that the price is always higher when I go to the checkout than I expected because "things got put in the wrong bins". I guess I'm just good at picking out the good stuff in the cheap bin.
I remember when they first opened in the 1990's they had huge bins of 80's computer parts, like hundreds of original IBM PC and AT boards. It was paradise for a PC builder. I still have a few of the ancient components I picked up back then, some in their original boxes. Alas, several days ago I searched for 4GB DDR2 DIMMs at both locations with no luck. It's hit or miss but sometimes you can score a treasure.
RE-PC was nice back a few years ago when I used to visit frequently. I scored like 10 of those 100MB internal SCSI zip drives for $5 each. They had up to 75% off sales with colored tags and it was literally impossible to not find killer deals. I bought rare PS2 and Gamecube games for $1 each. Nowadays, unless you are specifically looking for cables, everything is priced at or above eBay prices with no ability to return anything. Pay $400 for that vintage PC, take it home, find out it's broken and you're SOL. I find way better deals at Seattle Goodwill and they have a great return policy on everything you buy. I appreciate them for recycling junk, but gee, they have to know that everything they get is free from recyclers and it's not cool to charge so much + disallow any kind of returns!
@@Matthew28845 They just became too greedy for their own good. They make the majority of their money from PC repairs and refurbishing, so they could care less if their recycled stuff sit for months on end.
RE-PC lets you test almost everything before you buy it. So why didn't you test that vintage PC in the store before you paid $400 to take it home? BTW, they do have 30-day warranties on any vintage PC that they configured or confirmed working before it left the store. That policy is right there on their website. ...and to claim that "everything is priced at or above eBay prices" clearly shows you haven't been there in a while, if ever.
@@MrRobarino Um, no they don't. Last time I went in 2020, 90% of both stores stock was labeled "AS-IS NO TESTING ALLOWED". The only warranties are if you buy their refurbished stuff like PC, hard drives, RAM, CPUs, etc.
Wow, it got filmed in late Feb or early March. I go there all the time, and I can notice changes in inventory - that is how I can tell the timing of filming.
Travan tape drives! I was blown away when we tested those and found their reliability to be exactly on par with every other tape backup system (more than 1/3 of tape backups cannot be restored). As a backup system, they were more of a 'busy work to make you feel good' than an actual safety net, like roping yourself to save you from falling off the roof... and then tying the other end to your dog.
Don’t sweat the monitor. The spring that adjusts the height is tensioned on a plastic tab. It likely would shatter in shipping and you wouldn’t be able to adjust the height. Ask me how I know 😂
I go there all the time, they're great, especially the Seattle location. Sometimes their prices are outdated (for better or worse) or based on some old ebay sale. Just tell them and make an offer, they'll probably accept it. They get so much stuff, they don't want stuff sitting around for years. The back/processing area of these stores is super cool and huge too. If you're looking for something specific and can't find it on the floor, there's a decent chance they'll have it in the back.
When I was super broke I went RE-PC and picked up a cheap Dell office PC. I put more RAM, a new PSU, GPU, and SSD in it. It ran games quite well at the time.
Between 2002 and 2013 I collected old Mac Laptops. I had almost every model (but not every variation) when I sold them in 2013 to a computer museum in New Orleans. Now I have only 5 or 6 of my favorite ones left. Anyway when I traveled to Seattle I loved going to the downtown location because at that time the mac stuff went there and the PC stuff was at the other location. I got tons of powerbook parts and units as well as one of those G4 lampshade Macs like on your shelf behind you. Did they have any old mac laptops? I didn't see any in your pictures.
The guy who co-owned RE-PC and liked Mac stuff died around 2017 and all of the cool stuff he used to keep around the stores got liquidated. Now it's just one crotchety old asshole from the era of the Usenet flame wars in charge.
i can't believe a youtuber just got to the REPC Store that i just went few months ago! Also i bought a black laptop that costed like over 30 dollars it was cheap with no os so i installed it on it, however it had lags
The Belkin USB switch is great - I still use one of those for the KM of a KVM. Attach a cheap USB 2.0 hub to the A port, plug in your keyboard, mouse, webcam, etc, and use your monitor input switching instead of spending hundreds on a high end box.
My first job out of high school was working for non profit pc refurbisher, basically a smaller version of re-pc. I think we even sent stuff we didn't use to them. Super interesting stuff would come in thought the donation dock--I was a technician and basically tried to stay out of the way of the warehouse crew, but I'd cover the dock during their breaks or days off to take in donations. Endless serial cables and obscure peripherals, occasional valuable gaming hardware, cat pee soaked keyboards, really ran the gamut. Cat owners and banks always dropped off the nastiest stuff! I guess the finance sector is both resistant to new tech and spending money, and held on to old hardware as long as they could... probably could have lasted even longer if they blew the dust out every once and a while. The pictures you see on reddit of servers and PC's full of caked dust, grime, or even bugs (yuck) were an every day appearance for us--thank goodness for a N95, downdraft table, and endless compressed air.
I’m a little conflicted about Re-PC. I’m always so excited when I first walk in, but I often don’t leave with anything. I think most of the stuff is overpriced for me to be interested. A lot of their items just seem to gather dust for years. That’s awesome that you found some stuff that you like : ) I have that Logitech mouse mouse. I use it exclusively with Kid Pix.
Wow... they still have that Gateway Destination for $400? We're at 20 years now I believe. That was an LX chipset so you're limited to a 66mhz FBS. Also it was designed for Slot 1 CPUs so to mount anything ATX you have to rip out the 4 CPU posts. And forget about the IO shield as it's a little bit too small for standard. All the expansion cards I believe are ISA. They were NOT supported in Win2k AFAIK but my information was quite dated. It is a pretty cool case. It was nice to be able to mount 3 DVD burners. It was my basis for small time media production. But for the life of me I can't think of ANY application that would justify $400 for that puppy.
Re-PC's owners are crusty old Usenet assholes with a major case of Dunning-Kruger. If they had it their way, every item in the store would be ludicrously overpriced like this. Any bargain you find at RE-PC was priced when the owners weren't around. Period.
@@Akkbar21 I honestly haven't been in so long I can't comment on their current prices. I just remember that specific Gateway since it was a somewhat spiffy full sized desktop case. It was not $400 spiffy. I went Silverstone which while a little cramped is FAR more practical for a stereo stack. But hypothetically IF I was running that beast on 98 or ME and my hardware failed... well I'd upgrade but I could see someone paying a bit to keep it in service. Obviously no one ever had.
I hit the RePC in Seattle every few weeks. It does lose it's draw after a few visits because everything looks the same as 99% of the stuff doesn't move. I had a fun time recently getting some parts for a P4 retro build ($50 craigslist "Deal" becoming a $400 "Project").
You're right about it losing it's coolness if youre just there to look at stuff... But it's amazing if you're constantly in need of parts like I am! It's nice to reuse working parts for cheaper than a new one would be. Also can buy stuff not in production anymore like tested working IDE drives and older PCI/ISA/AGP stuff.
We used to have a great place like this in my neck of the woods called "Weird Stuff." Sadly, they closed up shop a few years back. Shortly followed, two other recyclers closed up shop, and one more closed its doors to public. So... nothing really left in the San Jose area of NorCal. :o(
Oh wow. I went to this store YEARS ago whenever i had to kill time. I totally forgot it existed lol. I do remember the staff being friendly and helpful. Neat place.
I wish we had stores like that in Ireland. We have this odd thing here where thrift type stores don't sell electronics for some legal reason (health and safety I assume). We do have stores that sell second hand electronics but they are really expensive and they mostly deal with game consoles, phones and newer laptops etc (CEX). I can imagine myself going into the RE-PC place after just getting paid from work and spending the day and coming out with loads of stuff I don't need but had to have anyway lol A nice PowerPC or an X-Serve would be a sure pickup for me :D
I had no idea CRT monitors were having a renaissance! I just threw out my parents' old CRT Dell monitor at their house because I gave them a slim LCD for their tiny desk.
A lot of RePC's prices are "optimistic," putting it kindly. I've been there a couple times and the only things I'd have been at all interested in were priced way higher than they were worth.
I needed a 9 pin D-sub once for an old monitor, and I found it at RE-PC. It's a 9 pin D-sub on one end, and 5 BNC + s-video on the other. It is weird but actually useful and I went digging for it in the cable bins at RE-PC. If you are looking for a cable, they have 5 of them.
Thank you for making this video! I completely forgot about RePC and, now that I’m back in Washington , I’ll have to go visit soon. In the late 90’s, I used to go to the Boeing Surplus Store to find the truly killer deals on vintage Mac stuff.
I REALLY enjoyed this video. I live in Seattle and years ago went to RE/PC frequently. Thank you for making this video and the tape on mic scene was hilarious.
That original iMac at the Industrial District location has actually been in my possession for some time now. When I saw the recording of it, I was like “huh, wait, that looks familiar”, and instantly recognized it was the most recent machine I bought for my collection.
I used to work two doors down from the Tukwila location, which made that a *dangerous* store for my bank account... I don't know how many hours I spent in that store while waiting for rush hour to die down.
Never heard of this store until your video randomly showed up just now and I watched out of curiosity. I'm in the area now and then and will have to check it out.
Wow I didn't think the 9600 tower would still be available! Well, as of 3 weeks ago. I hope you got a SuperDisk / LS120 drive to put in the Compaq haha.
Awesome videos. I used to work at the tukwila store. If you ever have a chance to go back, and you notice a price tag that is been there for several years, they'll absolutely be able to make you a deal. They have a pricing structure based on time that it's been there. For instance that blue I omega drive, the sticker's been on there since 2021. You most likely would have been able to talk to him down to about 50 bucks for it.
@@Mac84 no problem! And believe it or not they actually do have a very very large collection for eBay. Although about 80% of it's not actually up on their page. That large section behind the retail area is all the owners collection that he's ammased over the years. There are pallets of Apple 2e's back there for instance.
When I was a kid in the 90's, My monitor broke and I need a new one, I went to repc looking for something cheap, the had a pile of new 17" SVGA monitors in the box and the guy pointed at the pile and he said "take one". I asked, "how much", and he said, "no just take one it's free." Long story short, they have always been awesome.
Been coming to their Tukwila store for the last 5 or so years, bought many old iPods, game consoles and retro camcorders and the staff are always fun to talk to. You never know what you’ll find, even the 16:9 720p CRT Sony TV. RE-PC is the best
I discovered Iomega 's click-of-death was a boot sector issue; after trying some hard drive repair app on one of my Iomega Disks. I believe the issue may have been due to poor quality power control within the drive causing the power in the drives to fluctuate enough to damage the boot sectors of disks, resulting in the clicking sound which was the drive trying to find the boot sectors on the disks.
I love re-pc so much!!! I don't get much free time to go by anymore but every time i've been there i've walked out with stuff i've been looking for lol.
I'm down in the San Francisco Bay Area and do a drive up to the Portland area to hang with old friends around Christmas time. I would really like to do a "pilgrimage" up to both RE-PC's this year if I can. It's a pretty long drive up there, but not as bad coming from the Portland area. Great video as always!
The drive between Bay Area and King County can be done in 13 hours. The flights are cheap and frequent. You are a drama clown. There are stores like this in Multnomah.
@@markpreston6930 I clearly offended you enough for you to resort to name calling and I'M the drama clown? Are you this rude to everyone on the Internet or a jerk to everybody?
Been shopping there for decades! I was early into this stuff, 80 col cards and mag reel data storage, (1970's US Army) They have IBM 26 card reader and a 29 Punch/reader , plus a Univac 1710 card punch/reader!
Those buckets of memory modules looked great! I’ve been trying to find sticks of ram for a PowerMac 7600, cause they seem to be a weird size, and the individual sticks I find for sale on eBay are $$$
Cool tour! Looks like you got some awesome finds! From the video equipment to vintage Macs and PCs, it’s all really cool! I’d definitely get a bunch of physical media like tapes for HandyCams, cables/adapters/cards and anything remotely interesting. Then comes the problem of actually storing and dealing with everything haha, not to mention all those CRTs! Those Belkin Hubs are actually really interesting, didn’t know a modular design like that existed! They seem really useful for old and even new systems.
I'm probably lucky I don't have a RePC here in Chicago-land. I'd be in so much trouble and my wife would have to unalive me. Though the prices don't seem much worse than eBay. 😕
i wish there was a store like this close to me, best i can do that i know of is free geek twin cities which is a 5hr drive. sure i could always scour ebay but i like just walking into a store and having my eye catch something weird and cool that i can afford.
Their prices are now insane. Taking your time and searching eBay will get you far better prices, but even that is going to hell in a handbasket. I've not done much buying in the retro market in the last few years except a complete and (almost) working IBM 5150 that I got for a song. It will probably be my last. Now that stuff I bought 20 yeas ago for $25 is selling for $500 it's getting to be close to the time to sell off my sizeable collection and use the money for a new car or something.
The Audio Media ii nubus card I believe was the predecessor to Digidesign pro audio hardware. Sound designer 2 was the audio editor that later became Protools that used it. Built up a few 6100’s back in the day with them. Cheers
I feel you on the blue Zip drive you're holding at 8:34. I almost bought that exact one about a year ago. It didn't have the price-tag at the time. I got to check out with it and the guy at the register did a search to figure out how much it was worth. Turns out those SCSI Zip drives are worth a bit because of the vintage Macintosh crowd.
I wish modern equivalents of many accessories existed; that enabled up to easily augment today's desktops, laptops, game consoles, etc. Some things are out there as; I was able to use my old Sony PS1/PS2 to GameCube controller adapters; with the GameCube to Nintendo Switch Adapter, to use my duel arcade joystick controller with my Switch, Chromebook, and hopefully my Xbox series X.
Oh my GOD I want to visit so bad! I need to see if there's anything like that up here in Toronto Canada! I'd be sure to make a video of it! Very nice haul! 😍
3:51 both of those exact PowerMacs have been there for many months, or maybe even years. If any of you live in the general area and want one of those PowerMacs, they will probably still be there. They’ve also got a B&W G3 that’s been there forever. I might get it sometime
@@SwervingLemon My beige G3 has a ton of weird issues with ADB peripherals (to the point where I made a custom Mac OS 9 install disk with USB card drivers installed, just so I could move the mouse) Also, I thought it was the G5 that was a space heater? I didn’t know the G3 was known for it too
REPC use to have an original Mac daddy his name was Chris. He helped out a whole generation of Mac users. Lots of great stuff it is best to counter offer their prices on "gamblers" BTW.
Reminds me of the Weird Stuff Warehouse in San Jose. I spent many a weekend browsing Recycled electronics. Sadly I think they’ve been closed for a while.
RAM scrounging is the most'est fun. PC-100 or 133 so- dimms in 256k. I splunked for an hour and saw three. I found one bizzare double height 512k stick, guessing it was for a printer.
Gonna check them out to see if I can make progress on my "Arche Rival 386SC-16" project. Sourced a keyboard for a start. Need a monitor, serial mouse, 3 inch and a half drive, CD-ROM drive, Sound Blaster, and a monitor. And disks.
Go there all the time. Recycle there all the time. I find it amazing you consider this to be “heaven”. You REALLY have to be into retro to find what you are looking for. Most of the stuff of value is already sold or been recycled for parts.
I dropped off a bunch of e-waste, including one of those Microsoft mice over the holidays - maybe 9 trips in all. Comes in handy living 4 miles away from the Tukwila Re-PC. All prices are negotiable!
It's too bad you couldn't get a chance to see the Living Computers museum when it was still open. They had a lot of this kind of stuff in working condition where you could use them, learn BASIC programming, play old PC games, etc.
The first Apple LCD was coooool, they were $1500 but I got one for $700 and flew back from Atlanta with one as a carryon. Used it forever. Blue. The black was nice too. But yeah, got one for $49 a few years back.
Grew up on repc over the last 25 years. The Tukwilla location used to be bigger than Seattle with an ink refilling service in the rear of the store. They moved one block over several years ago to that smaller location which i found sad. My favorite area is the as-is corner. Sad you didnt check it out. I have to say it was so much more interesting in the 2000's when tech was changing so rapidly.
They filled the void left by Frys after it kind of went into the toilet. The SODO locations has more A/V stuff but the Tukwila location has a lot more actual PC things. I go to both frequently and frequently donate to them as well.
Don't donate to RE-PC, the owners will hoard the tech you give them for years and never sell it. Their "computer museum" is a dusty, untended joke. The majority of the security cameras in the store aren't real. They mistreat their employees and the local retro community alike.
When I was a broke kid in late 80's the place to scrounge for PC parts was Boeing surplus in Kent, WA. Computer parts were dirt cheap as they upgraded systems in their offices. It was a great way to learn how to build a working system and troubleshoot. When RE-PC opened in the 90's it was quite a step up, and that was the place to go if I needed something specific. But at Boeing surplus you never knew what else you'd find in there, it went way beyond computers. It closed in 2007 and was a real loss to the community in my opinion.
Oh, you remember Boeing Surplus Store??? Wow, they've been out for quite a few years now.
When gramps had better things to do than kiddo watch he drug you to the Boeing Surplus Store circa 1980. I was living in south Bellevue when it closed (not Factoria ...insert Almost Live Joke). Sadness.
I haven't been more than a couple times since I was a pre grade school kid in the early 80s and I still have dreams about it. Dad bought a panel van and converted it for passengers, with airplane seats in the back for us kids
Loved Boeing surplus..1 mile from my home at the time spent many hours there. Re-PC in Tukwila I used to buy old Apple SCSI drives for my Amiga's, Needed a lot of drives for the BBS :)
My dad bought one of those PCs from the boeing surplus and I took it apart. There were probably 40 screws haha. I didn't have it in my to put it back together. My dad wasn't very happy but I sure did learn how things were put together.
RE-PC is the biggest thing I miss about that region.... I used to hit up the Tukwila location a few times a month.
I love RE-PC so much! Glad you got a chance to check it out. 👍
Hey! I was in Seattle at Sakura con and had to take a stop off and go to RE-PC because of your video.
I ended up walking out with a Dell dimension Pentium 2 machine.
Thanks so much!
Thanks for the comment! Yeah, I was super glad to be able to stop by, even if it was only for a bit :-)
Agreed, Re-PC in Tukwila is one of my go-to places for building retro gaming equipment.
I swear I practically live in that place on the weekends. The Tukwila location is amazing!
My only knock with RE-PC is that the price is always higher when I go to the checkout than I expected because "things got put in the wrong bins". I guess I'm just good at picking out the good stuff in the cheap bin.
I remember when they first opened in the 1990's they had huge bins of 80's computer parts, like hundreds of original IBM PC and AT boards. It was paradise for a PC builder. I still have a few of the ancient components I picked up back then, some in their original boxes. Alas, several days ago I searched for 4GB DDR2 DIMMs at both locations with no luck. It's hit or miss but sometimes you can score a treasure.
Same here. I discovered that store back in 1999. Now I wonder, when they actually did open... And the manager at Seattle store is still the same.
RE-PC was nice back a few years ago when I used to visit frequently. I scored like 10 of those 100MB internal SCSI zip drives for $5 each. They had up to 75% off sales with colored tags and it was literally impossible to not find killer deals. I bought rare PS2 and Gamecube games for $1 each.
Nowadays, unless you are specifically looking for cables, everything is priced at or above eBay prices with no ability to return anything. Pay $400 for that vintage PC, take it home, find out it's broken and you're SOL. I find way better deals at Seattle Goodwill and they have a great return policy on everything you buy.
I appreciate them for recycling junk, but gee, they have to know that everything they get is free from recyclers and it's not cool to charge so much + disallow any kind of returns!
Makes me wonder how much of that stuff they actually sell. I imagine a lot of those PCs sit for months or years
@@Matthew28845 They just became too greedy for their own good. They make the majority of their money from PC repairs and refurbishing, so they could care less if their recycled stuff sit for months on end.
RE-PC lets you test almost everything before you buy it. So why didn't you test that vintage PC in the store before you paid $400 to take it home? BTW, they do have 30-day warranties on any vintage PC that they configured or confirmed working before it left the store. That policy is right there on their website.
...and to claim that "everything is priced at or above eBay prices" clearly shows you haven't been there in a while, if ever.
Yeah... power supplies from 2010 shouldn't be $50 when you can get new ones at that price.
@@MrRobarino Um, no they don't. Last time I went in 2020, 90% of both stores stock was labeled "AS-IS NO TESTING ALLOWED". The only warranties are if you buy their refurbished stuff like PC, hard drives, RAM, CPUs, etc.
Wow, it got filmed in late Feb or early March. I go there all the time, and I can notice changes in inventory - that is how I can tell the timing of filming.
Warshington! Welcome to the Pacific Northwest.
oh cool you came up to seattle! RE-PC has some pretty cool stuff yea. glad you could visit!
Travan tape drives! I was blown away when we tested those and found their reliability to be exactly on par with every other tape backup system (more than 1/3 of tape backups cannot be restored).
As a backup system, they were more of a 'busy work to make you feel good' than an actual safety net, like roping yourself to save you from falling off the roof... and then tying the other end to your dog.
That's just down the road from me, and I never knew it existed. Thanks!
Don’t sweat the monitor. The spring that adjusts the height is tensioned on a plastic tab. It likely would shatter in shipping and you wouldn’t be able to adjust the height. Ask me how I know 😂
Oh no!! I guess it's time for a road trip!
How do you know? 🤔😂
I remember Bernoulli disks being about 8 inches square or larger.
Those drives sounded absolutely lovely when you powered them on and off.
Yo! REPC! I go there every few weeks! A wonderful store.
same here.
same here!!
The Seattle branch looks like they added that back wall partitioning the area. Both locations have downsized about 10 years ago.
I go there all the time, they're great, especially the Seattle location. Sometimes their prices are outdated (for better or worse) or based on some old ebay sale. Just tell them and make an offer, they'll probably accept it. They get so much stuff, they don't want stuff sitting around for years. The back/processing area of these stores is super cool and huge too. If you're looking for something specific and can't find it on the floor, there's a decent chance they'll have it in the back.
RE-PC has gone insane with their pricing. Very little there is worth buying anymore
The 30-pin RAM with male pins is actually "SIPP" memory for an early 286.
I’m from the Chicago area currently visiting my mom in the PNW, thank you for reminding me that this store is up here. I am now headed to Tuckwilla!
When I was super broke I went RE-PC and picked up a cheap Dell office PC. I put more RAM, a new PSU, GPU, and SSD in it. It ran games quite well at the time.
Between 2002 and 2013 I collected old Mac Laptops. I had almost every model (but not every variation) when I sold them in 2013 to a computer museum in New Orleans. Now I have only 5 or 6 of my favorite ones left. Anyway when I traveled to Seattle I loved going to the downtown location because at that time the mac stuff went there and the PC stuff was at the other location. I got tons of powerbook parts and units as well as one of those G4 lampshade Macs like on your shelf behind you. Did they have any old mac laptops? I didn't see any in your pictures.
The guy who co-owned RE-PC and liked Mac stuff died around 2017 and all of the cool stuff he used to keep around the stores got liquidated. Now it's just one crotchety old asshole from the era of the Usenet flame wars in charge.
i can't believe a youtuber just got to the REPC Store that i just went few months ago! Also i bought a black laptop that costed like over 30 dollars it was cheap with no os so i installed it on it, however it had lags
The Belkin USB switch is great - I still use one of those for the KM of a KVM. Attach a cheap USB 2.0 hub to the A port, plug in your keyboard, mouse, webcam, etc, and use your monitor input switching instead of spending hundreds on a high end box.
My first job out of high school was working for non profit pc refurbisher, basically a smaller version of re-pc. I think we even sent stuff we didn't use to them. Super interesting stuff would come in thought the donation dock--I was a technician and basically tried to stay out of the way of the warehouse crew, but I'd cover the dock during their breaks or days off to take in donations. Endless serial cables and obscure peripherals, occasional valuable gaming hardware, cat pee soaked keyboards, really ran the gamut. Cat owners and banks always dropped off the nastiest stuff! I guess the finance sector is both resistant to new tech and spending money, and held on to old hardware as long as they could... probably could have lasted even longer if they blew the dust out every once and a while. The pictures you see on reddit of servers and PC's full of caked dust, grime, or even bugs (yuck) were an every day appearance for us--thank goodness for a N95, downdraft table, and endless compressed air.
I’m a little conflicted about Re-PC. I’m always so excited when I first walk in, but I often don’t leave with anything. I think most of the stuff is overpriced for me to be interested. A lot of their items just seem to gather dust for years. That’s awesome that you found some stuff that you like : )
I have that Logitech mouse mouse. I use it exclusively with Kid Pix.
Wow... they still have that Gateway Destination for $400? We're at 20 years now I believe. That was an LX chipset so you're limited to a 66mhz FBS. Also it was designed for Slot 1 CPUs so to mount anything ATX you have to rip out the 4 CPU posts. And forget about the IO shield as it's a little bit too small for standard. All the expansion cards I believe are ISA. They were NOT supported in Win2k AFAIK but my information was quite dated.
It is a pretty cool case. It was nice to be able to mount 3 DVD burners. It was my basis for small time media production. But for the life of me I can't think of ANY application that would justify $400 for that puppy.
Ya they’ve lost their way. Used to be reasonable with prices. No longer. No reason to go there anymore.
Re-PC's owners are crusty old Usenet assholes with a major case of Dunning-Kruger. If they had it their way, every item in the store would be ludicrously overpriced like this. Any bargain you find at RE-PC was priced when the owners weren't around. Period.
@@Akkbar21 The owner's a crusty old fart who hates people.
@@Akkbar21 I honestly haven't been in so long I can't comment on their current prices. I just remember that specific Gateway since it was a somewhat spiffy full sized desktop case. It was not $400 spiffy. I went Silverstone which while a little cramped is FAR more practical for a stereo stack.
But hypothetically IF I was running that beast on 98 or ME and my hardware failed... well I'd upgrade but I could see someone paying a bit to keep it in service. Obviously no one ever had.
I hit the RePC in Seattle every few weeks. It does lose it's draw after a few visits because everything looks the same as 99% of the stuff doesn't move. I had a fun time recently getting some parts for a P4 retro build ($50 craigslist "Deal" becoming a $400 "Project").
You're right about it losing it's coolness if youre just there to look at stuff... But it's amazing if you're constantly in need of parts like I am! It's nice to reuse working parts for cheaper than a new one would be. Also can buy stuff not in production anymore like tested working IDE drives and older PCI/ISA/AGP stuff.
Yeah, I was in and out of both of the stores doing Tech Ambrosia's #CheapPcChallenge2023
I picked up an HBA + cables and some super cheap 10g network cards for a TrueNAS project recently
Haha I know what you mean about initially cheap deals becoming fairly expensive projects man. 😂
We used to have a great place like this in my neck of the woods called "Weird Stuff." Sadly, they closed up shop a few years back. Shortly followed, two other recyclers closed up shop, and one more closed its doors to public. So... nothing really left in the San Jose area of NorCal. :o(
Oh wow. I went to this store YEARS ago whenever i had to kill time. I totally forgot it existed lol.
I do remember the staff being friendly and helpful. Neat place.
I wish we had stores like that in Ireland. We have this odd thing here where thrift type stores don't sell electronics for some legal reason (health and safety I assume). We do have stores that sell second hand electronics but they are really expensive and they mostly deal with game consoles, phones and newer laptops etc (CEX). I can imagine myself going into the RE-PC place after just getting paid from work and spending the day and coming out with loads of stuff I don't need but had to have anyway lol
A nice PowerPC or an X-Serve would be a sure pickup for me :D
I had no idea CRT monitors were having a renaissance! I just threw out my parents' old CRT Dell monitor at their house because I gave them a slim LCD for their tiny desk.
I'm glad you like Re-PC, it's one of my favorite places to geek out on my day off.
I never knew these stores existed. I will have to come by and visit.
Every town needs a store like this one...........I'd be giddy in a store like this..........I'd be salivating all over everything! LOL :)
1:40 TRS80 spotted. That was my first computer. We had both tape and 5.25” floppy drive for this.
That apple modem is my first modem for my IIgs. I used to dial into some local bbs
A lot of RePC's prices are "optimistic," putting it kindly. I've been there a couple times and the only things I'd have been at all interested in were priced way higher than they were worth.
I shop there all the time. awesome place
I needed a 9 pin D-sub once for an old monitor, and I found it at RE-PC. It's a 9 pin D-sub on one end, and 5 BNC + s-video on the other. It is weird but actually useful and I went digging for it in the cable bins at RE-PC. If you are looking for a cable, they have 5 of them.
Thank you for making this video! I completely forgot about RePC and, now that I’m back in Washington , I’ll have to go visit soon. In the late 90’s, I used to go to the Boeing Surplus Store to find the truly killer deals on vintage Mac stuff.
I REALLY enjoyed this video. I live in Seattle and years ago went to RE/PC frequently. Thank you for making this video and the tape on mic scene was hilarious.
That original iMac at the Industrial District location has actually been in my possession for some time now. When I saw the recording of it, I was like “huh, wait, that looks familiar”, and instantly recognized it was the most recent machine I bought for my collection.
I used to work two doors down from the Tukwila location, which made that a *dangerous* store for my bank account...
I don't know how many hours I spent in that store while waiting for rush hour to die down.
This video brought me a ton of joy, and makes me want to drive up to Seattle from Portland and have myself a thrift day
We went to a similar store in Portland, but that was oh, at least ten years ago. I wish I could remember the name of it.
Huh, I live in the area but never thought to check out RE-PC. I'll certainly check them out now!
Never heard of this store until your video randomly showed up just now and I watched out of curiosity. I'm in the area now and then and will have to check it out.
Wow I didn't think the 9600 tower would still be available! Well, as of 3 weeks ago. I hope you got a SuperDisk / LS120 drive to put in the Compaq haha.
Awesome videos. I used to work at the tukwila store. If you ever have a chance to go back, and you notice a price tag that is been there for several years, they'll absolutely be able to make you a deal. They have a pricing structure based on time that it's been there. For instance that blue I omega drive, the sticker's been on there since 2021. You most likely would have been able to talk to him down to about 50 bucks for it.
Thank you for the kind words and the info, that’s good to know! If I’m ever back in the area I’ll have to visit again. ❤️
@@Mac84 no problem! And believe it or not they actually do have a very very large collection for eBay. Although about 80% of it's not actually up on their page. That large section behind the retail area is all the owners collection that he's ammased over the years. There are pallets of Apple 2e's back there for instance.
When I was a kid in the 90's, My monitor broke and I need a new one, I went to repc looking for something cheap, the had a pile of new 17" SVGA monitors in the box and the guy pointed at the pile and he said "take one". I asked, "how much", and he said, "no just take one it's free." Long story short, they have always been awesome.
Been coming to their Tukwila store for the last 5 or so years, bought many old iPods, game consoles and retro camcorders and the staff are always fun to talk to. You never know what you’ll find, even the 16:9 720p CRT Sony TV. RE-PC is the best
I discovered Iomega 's click-of-death was a boot sector issue; after trying some hard drive repair app on one of my Iomega Disks. I believe the issue may have been due to poor quality power control within the drive causing the power in the drives to fluctuate enough to damage the boot sectors of disks, resulting in the clicking sound which was the drive trying to find the boot sectors on the disks.
I love re-pc so much!!!
I don't get much free time to go by anymore but every time i've been there i've walked out with stuff i've been looking for lol.
Bought my first dedicated video card at re-pc in the mid 2000s!
OMG! At 1:45 in the video, you see a Commodore 64 with its' monitor and disk drive! I had one of those as a kid, and also an Atari 2600!
Their "museum" is a joke and all those systems are neglected and nonfunctional.
Might swoop down there and nab that Power PC for an original BeOs desktop to play with
Sweet! I recently picked up a new in box 2010 Dell Optiplex. Being the first person to open is quite satisfying.
I'm down in the San Francisco Bay Area and do a drive up to the Portland area to hang with old friends around Christmas time. I would really like to do a "pilgrimage" up to both RE-PC's this year if I can. It's a pretty long drive up there, but not as bad coming from the Portland area. Great video as always!
The drive between Bay Area and King County can be done in 13 hours. The flights are cheap and frequent. You are a drama clown. There are stores like this in Multnomah.
@@markpreston6930 I clearly offended you enough for you to resort to name calling and I'M the drama clown? Are you this rude to everyone on the Internet or a jerk to everybody?
Been shopping there for decades! I was early into this stuff, 80 col cards and mag reel data storage, (1970's US Army) They have IBM 26 card reader and a 29 Punch/reader , plus a Univac 1710 card punch/reader!
that bucket of 13w3 cables REALLY threw me off haha
I live in Seattle and had no idea this was here! Thank you!
Oh wow! That place would have given me a buffer overrun! Thanks for sharing. Poor Tom! 😂
Those buckets of memory modules looked great! I’ve been trying to find sticks of ram for a PowerMac 7600, cause they seem to be a weird size, and the individual sticks I find for sale on eBay are $$$
I know! I kick myself for only grabbing some 30-pin memory... as when I got home I realized I could use some 72-pin memory for my Power Macs... d'oh!
Crazy! I also went to both RE-PC locations the first time last month
I have been to the Tukwila location, and bought a reasonably priced used monitor.
I feel your frustration about the mixed up items.
Nice throwback for me. I haven't lived there for 4 years now, but Re-PC is Tukwila was a regular stop for me. Grown-up nerd candy store. 👍
wow never heard of this. thanks for sharing ☀💧💀🔥🌳
Cool tour! Looks like you got some awesome finds! From the video equipment to vintage Macs and PCs, it’s all really cool! I’d definitely get a bunch of physical media like tapes for HandyCams, cables/adapters/cards and anything remotely interesting. Then comes the problem of actually storing and dealing with everything haha, not to mention all those CRTs! Those Belkin Hubs are actually really interesting, didn’t know a modular design like that existed! They seem really useful for old and even new systems.
I'm probably lucky I don't have a RePC here in Chicago-land. I'd be in so much trouble and my wife would have to unalive me. Though the prices don't seem much worse than eBay. 😕
I was thinking the same man, my wife puts up with the house being pretty chockers with stuff already. 😂😂😂
This is so awesome brother! Thanks so much for sharing! I subbed - keep up the great work. Cheers from California
i wish there was a store like this close to me, best i can do that i know of is free geek twin cities which is a 5hr drive. sure i could always scour ebay but i like just walking into a store and having my eye catch something weird and cool that i can afford.
I love Re-PC .. anytime I go to seattle I head over there
Reminds me of the old Weird Stuff Warehouse in San Jose, now defuncted out of biz. The carts were Syquest which made a 44MB disk cartridge drive.
Yep, I have plenty of 44MB SyQuest disks... I guess these will go in that pile...
Their prices are now insane. Taking your time and searching eBay will get you far better prices, but even that is going to hell in a handbasket. I've not done much buying in the retro market in the last few years except a complete and (almost) working IBM 5150 that I got for a song. It will probably be my last. Now that stuff I bought 20 yeas ago for $25 is selling for $500 it's getting to be close to the time to sell off my sizeable collection and use the money for a new car or something.
The Audio Media ii nubus card I believe was the predecessor to Digidesign pro audio hardware. Sound designer 2 was the audio editor that later became Protools that used it. Built up a few 6100’s back in the day with them. Cheers
I feel you on the blue Zip drive you're holding at 8:34. I almost bought that exact one about a year ago. It didn't have the price-tag at the time. I got to check out with it and the guy at the register did a search to figure out how much it was worth. Turns out those SCSI Zip drives are worth a bit because of the vintage Macintosh crowd.
They had other SCSI ones for $55, so I'm not sure why this one was $100 - unless the color made it uncommon?
I bought a HP wide format printer there for $20 or $30. I took it apart and made a motorized camera slider. The rest is history.
I wish modern equivalents of many accessories existed; that enabled up to easily augment today's desktops, laptops, game consoles, etc. Some things are out there as; I was able to use my old Sony PS1/PS2 to GameCube controller adapters; with the GameCube to Nintendo Switch Adapter, to use my duel arcade joystick controller with my Switch, Chromebook, and hopefully my Xbox series X.
Oh my GOD I want to visit so bad! I need to see if there's anything like that up here in Toronto Canada! I'd be sure to make a video of it!
Very nice haul! 😍
3:51 both of those exact PowerMacs have been there for many months, or maybe even years. If any of you live in the general area and want one of those PowerMacs, they will probably still be there.
They’ve also got a B&W G3 that’s been there forever. I might get it sometime
B&W G3? Why? Do you need a space heater/white noise generator?
I don't miss mine at all.
@@SwervingLemon My beige G3 has a ton of weird issues with ADB peripherals (to the point where I made a custom Mac OS 9 install disk with USB card drivers installed, just so I could move the mouse)
Also, I thought it was the G5 that was a space heater? I didn’t know the G3 was known for it too
REPC use to have an original Mac daddy his name was Chris. He helped out a whole generation of Mac users. Lots of great stuff it is best to counter offer their prices on "gamblers" BTW.
Reminds me of the Weird Stuff Warehouse in San Jose. I spent many a weekend browsing Recycled electronics. Sadly I think they’ve been closed for a while.
Nice, not sure if you seen Cathode Ray Dude’s stuff but this is his stomping ground. He’s done vids here too.
Yes, I talk about him in the video - certainly familiar!
@@Mac84 Very cool, I know the pains of trying to collab but it'd been cool for you two to meet there.
Great video, thank you for documenting that place! And nice finds!
RAM scrounging is the most'est fun. PC-100 or 133 so- dimms in 256k. I splunked for an hour and saw three. I found one bizzare double height 512k stick, guessing it was for a printer.
Gonna check them out to see if I can make progress on my "Arche Rival 386SC-16" project. Sourced a keyboard for a start. Need a monitor, serial mouse, 3 inch and a half drive, CD-ROM drive, Sound Blaster, and a monitor. And disks.
Go there all the time. Recycle there all the time. I find it amazing you consider this to be “heaven”. You REALLY have to be into retro to find what you are looking for. Most of the stuff of value is already sold or been recycled for parts.
RE PC is my goto spot!
We bought an early pc there to use as a backup for my dad's industrial router that only runs on an older version of dos
I bought my HP servers from there when I lived in Renton. I miss going all the time.
the subtle Twin Peaks reference is greatly appreciated.
🌲🌲
I dropped off a bunch of e-waste, including one of those Microsoft mice over the holidays - maybe 9 trips in all. Comes in handy living 4 miles away from the Tukwila Re-PC.
All prices are negotiable!
It's too bad you couldn't get a chance to see the Living Computers museum when it was still open. They had a lot of this kind of stuff in working condition where you could use them, learn BASIC programming, play old PC games, etc.
@4:11 So you buy the box and MAIL IT HOME.
The first Apple LCD was coooool, they were $1500 but I got one for $700 and flew back from Atlanta with one as a carryon. Used it forever. Blue. The black was nice too. But yeah, got one for $49 a few years back.
I have one of those Audiomedia cards stored somewhere. Need to pull mine out and stick it in my Radius 80/110. 😀
I live here and still haven’t visited yet but I have visited Gorilla Games locations in Seattle. Will have to make a trip soon
I'm not really a retro pc fan, but lordie those blue apple studio displays are beautiful, and I'd use one right now if I could.
Ready for Justin to make a visit for some Trident cards...LOL. Loved the video is great to see stores like this.
Not just the retro stuff. Monitors from a couple of years ago are often available too, even 4K, for very low prices.
Grew up on repc over the last 25 years. The Tukwilla location used to be bigger than Seattle with an ink refilling service in the rear of the store. They moved one block over several years ago to that smaller location which i found sad. My favorite area is the as-is corner. Sad you didnt check it out.
I have to say it was so much more interesting in the 2000's when tech was changing so rapidly.
I know! I don't like their new location. Old one was much bigger and cheaper too
They filled the void left by Frys after it kind of went into the toilet. The SODO locations has more A/V stuff but the Tukwila location has a lot more actual PC things. I go to both frequently and frequently donate to them as well.
Don't donate to RE-PC, the owners will hoard the tech you give them for years and never sell it. Their "computer museum" is a dusty, untended joke. The majority of the security cameras in the store aren't real. They mistreat their employees and the local retro community alike.