Radio Shack closing many stores. Are experimenters obsolete?

In My Humble Opinion
41

People I know always make fun of the quality of Radio Shack components. I’ll agree they’re not great, and there are a lot fewer Radio Shacks than there used to be (even before this round of closings), and the hobbyist’s department has really shrunk. But RS was about the only place you could walk into a store and get the basic components – wire, strippers, perf board, experimenter socket board, soldering equipment, individual components – in most places. I stopped in there frequently for random parts, despite their rep.

With fewer Radio Shack’s, and with most hobby stores biting the dust, I’ll either have to go to the few Boston institutions (You-Do-It Electronics, the MIT Swap Meet), or buy from Newark Electronics (or other such places) through the internet. This is a pain in the neck.

42

Wow! Even this piece linked in the left hand column is relevant!
Ukrainian-Russian Tensions Dividing U.S. Citizens Along Ignorant, Apathetic Lines

—G!
[Sorry; it’s not hyperlinked.]

43

Now it is.

44

They haven’t had anything that interested me for a long time, either the item wasn’t in stock or was far overpriced. Like $8 for an 1/8" audio cable that was worth about $2.

You can get anything you want from Mouser or DigiKey, and I believe one or the other have removed order minimums, so you can order $2 worth of stuff now.

45

I have fond memories of going to Radio Shack as a lad and buying electronic components and some Forrest M. Mims books. As a 9 year old, I would try and build those circuits. I also salvaged parts from old TVs and radios.

But I don’t blame RS for getting out of the game. I believe it would still be “in it” if hobbyist were still around to support it. Sadly, though, it’s rare nowadays for anyone to build electronic stuff at home. Especially kids.

46

Not only that, but for “serious” or commercial use, I would never use RS electronic components. For the following reasons:

  1. As far as I can tell, they don’t adhere to industry standard specs (e.g. ANSI).
  2. The components are not packaged correctly.
  3. They’re not made by a reputable manufacturer.

But on the other hand, they’re great for tinkering and learning, and there’s a lot to be said for that.

47

Why did Radio Shack lose interest in Computers? Are they even making the Tandy line anymore?

I can recall the TRS-80 selling really well. Then the Tandy 1000. Some Radio Shacks even had a training room for computer software classes. They sold all the computer accessories. Modems, keyboards, mice, printers. It seemed like a smart move for a tech store to get into computer sales.

The Tandy 1000 had some weird compatibility issues. Never understood why it wasn’t a PC clone. The Tandy 1000 was the only pc that I used with MS DOS in ROM. Booted really fast.

48

Well… I wouldn’t use them for any life-critical application, but I hardly think there are factories churning out substandard electronic parts at this level. RS stuff is no better and no worse than any “jellybean” parts, no matter who sources them.

If you were hands-on in that era, you’ll recall that there were a LOT of 8086/8 computers that were only loosely based on the same architecture. Everyone wanted an exclusive user base, because such a locked market was how business computing worked. No two PCs ran the same OS or the same software in quite the same way.

My favorite was the DEC Rainbow. It had no floppy disc format utility; you had to buy preformatted discs from Digital at about $25 each. It was also sold like a mainframe: the CPU and the console were sold separately even though neither could work without the other and there was no facility for multiple consoles on a single CPU.

All of it was just “done the way it had been done for bigger computers” and it took the industry a long time to figure out a new model. And, of course, at least one company never did. :smiley:

49

I stopped going to radio shack when they started trying to aggressively sell me a cell phone every time I stopped in for a soldering iron tip or an audio jack, and usually being totally ignored unless I wandered over to the cell phone area.

Nowadays if you need a triac there’s Mouser, or if you don’t have enough to make shipping worthwhile from them you can get it for a buck on eBay, shipping included. I also noticed MicroCenter is starting to carry a lot of hobbyist electronic type stuff.

50

Yes, they got some crazy little women
but you gotta get that Illinois wine!

51

Bumped. More bad news for RadioShack: RadioShack May Have To File For Bankruptcy | HuffPost Impact

52

buy a battery and save the store.

53

For as obsolete as they are, RS is still the only place (that’s not all the way across town) to buy things like audio cable adapters (I recently needed a 1/4” headphone to RCA adapter).
Best Buy? - Nope.
Ace Hardware? - Better than Best Buy, but still no.
Where else? Oh, yeah - nowhere!

I can get things like that easily over the Internet, but not when I need them today.

54

I was an assistant manager of a Radio Shack for several years when I was young. That was the ‘golden era’ of Radio Shack, when the employees themselves were usually Ham radio guys or computer experimenters or kit builders. One of my regular activities was drawing schematics for customers for simple circuits they needed, or to discuss Z-80 assembly code with a customer over a coffee, served from the machine we kept out for our customers. I loved that job.

What happened to Radio Shack was that they started to move upscale. The stores in my city all shifted into shopping malls, and became smaller stores with much higher costs per square foot.

The result was that it became too expensive to stock rarely-purchased items. I remember we would do inventory and find goods in the store that had been in inventory for ten years. If your little town didn’t have anyone who needed a 36-24v stepdown transformer, that thing was going to sit on the shelf forever.

So, Radio Shack started aiming at the mass market, becoming just another phone and gadget seller in a crowded, highly competitive market. And they got their asses kicked.

It could have gone another way. Radio Shack did have to get out of the electronics part business at the retail level. But they could have worked very hard on having a terrific web store for electronic parts which could also serve to advertise the higher-value items that are in the store.

And the stores themselves should have become the hubs for the ‘maker’ movement. Electronic experimentation isn’t going away - it’s just morphing. People who would have been HAM operators 50 years ago are now experimenting with Arduino, flying drones, building 3-D printers, and doing all kinds of other cool stuff with technology.

We have craft stores here called “Michaels”. Those stores help build their own markets by offering arts and crafts classes, providing meeting rooms for artists to teach, and by offering heavy discounts on strategic items every week. Radio Shack should have become the Michaels of the hobbyist/maker movement. Sell tools, R/C stuff, Arduino and other microcontrollers, test equipment, 3D printers and other things geeks and engineers will love. Maybe even move in the ‘science’ direction and carry some telescopes, microscopes, etc. Offer classes on making things. Sponsor meet-ups and contests. Work with the schools. Energize the community and create a market.

Too bad they never had the vision. They took the ‘easy’ road, and got trampled.