A little history

BCD Electro was founded in 1979 by Bob Harris Sr. on a card table in my parent’s living room. The original name was BCD Radio Parts Co., and was created to serve the amateur radio community. Dallas had an electronics flea market known as 1st Saturday that was held in the downtown area that was the primary source of income at first. BCD then went on the road to other electronic s flea markets around the country. I was traveling to 30 of these events per year at the peak of this era of the company. The “Big One” was in Dayton OH. And was a three day marathon of ham radio enthusiasts haggling over spending $.25 on a connector that cost $3.75 out of franchised distribution. There were thousands in attendance and the Dayton Hamvention is still going.
About 1981 I joined my mother and father in the BCD business after a stint in Dallas and later Austin in the music biz as a guitar maker and repair person, wow those were some fun times I wouldn’t trade for anything, but I was a single father and really needed to start making some money. We had a mail order catalog then also that a good friend in the business let us use (thanks Billy). My Dad left the business in 1987 after finding a new interest in estate jewelry and I moved the catalog from a paste up to electronic version via Pagemaker software. This was a 6 month long process of many 12 and 14 hour days on a 20 MHz 286 computer. We put out about a half a dozen of those catalogs, and at first, they would bring a lot of orders, but after a couple of years the orders were dropping quite precipitously. Ham radio was moving away from the do-it-yourselfer to the you-can-buy-it-cheaper-than-you-can-build-it-er.
We abandoned the catalog business and auctioned the catalog inventory to begin buying and selling excess and surplus electronic components, mainly semiconductor materials. There was always the “what the %#@ is this” aspect of this, especially when we were working with TI missiles and aerospace from the old county store in the main TI plant at Central and IH 635. This kept things interesting and challenging as there was always something new to sell and/or recycle. The recycling aspect of the business was always there in the EOL and the yet to be coined PLM (product lifecycle management) business.
BCD has now moved the recycling aspect of the business to a more prominent position in the company with all the greens, RoHs and WEEEs that have emerged in the last few years. We are working with hospitals for medical equipment, as well as many other types of businesses for environmentally sound disposal of IT, networking telecomm and other industrial electronics. We are keeping disk drive data from leaking into the hands of data pirates by destruction and erasing to military specifications.
Semiconductor sales is still our main income and specialty.

RoHS/WEEE

Many independant distributors are struggling with how to juggle stock levels of non RoHS compliant parts. I think there will be a shortage of both compliant and non compliant parts. Emphasis on compliant as it was with the surface mount transition. I stocked a lot of through hole IC's and did OK, but the surface mount shortage was a real windfall for BCD Electro and most of the other independent distributors I know that were operating back then... was it 90-91?

As far a s WEEE is concerned, this is an opportunity for companies that have backgrounds in surplus and excess inventory management. PLM is the new term and is much more sophisticated than we were just a few years ago. Very interesting times.

We are looking for the governing powers to come up with a set of rules for recycling so companies can follow them. The European initiatives RoHS and WEEE are still trying to set up a set of rules also. OK so this is a whiney blog but I just wanted to see what others are saying. Yes I am in the electronic recycling business. CA., ME. and a few other states have passed laws governing e-recycling, so far as I know the laws are not settling on a common guideline for the US. This is trouble in the long run as material is transported and having to comply with different laws as state lines are crossed.

Recycling electronics in Texas

We are looking for the governing powers to come up with a set of rules for recycling so companies can follow them. The European initiatives RoHS and WEEE are still trying to set up a set of rules also. OK so this is a whiney blog but I just wanted to see what others are saying. Yes I am in the electronic recycling business. CA., ME. and a few other states have passed laws gonerning e-recycling, so far as I know the laws are not settling on a common guideline for the US. This is trouble in the long run as material is transported and having to comply with different laws as state lines are crossed.