eevBLAB #7 - Radio Shack Declares Bankruptcy!

[angelioto007]

We can say, that i´m still starting, ´cause im 14yrs old, but it is relly interestinig, and even today i´m still surprised, when i was young, like around 3 to 5 yrs, i was scared of those electric cars for kids, dunno why, but i was. Today it´s my "hobby".
When I was around  6 yrs old, parrents bought me the kit with the steel braces and screws and so, it´s called Mercur i think. Well, that´s where i got my first screwdriver and i still use it today, i do even use the screw with nuts from the kit, they´re ideal for heatsinks! Well anyway when i got the screwdriver, i´ve started to dissasemble toys appart to see, how they´re working.
I´ve started the hobby around 6 months ago, when my dad showed me, that there´s a shop for these "low voltage" stuff. It´s on my way from the school, so i and my friend are visiting the shop every friday, because yunno, friday, the day when the freedom begins...
When i was around 11, i with my dad were making a small experiment, we´ve been charging a battery (rechargable of course) with a small solar panel from other kit. Succesful, we have charged the battery, and that was the first time i´ve seen a multimeter. When i was 12, my dad gave me that multimeter. Today i still have that multimeter, but i call it "the ham", beacuse it´s that kind of class "el cheapos". Over the xmas i bought myself a new multimeter, the uni-t ut61c and bought an Arduino Uno, because why not.
Before this hobby, my main fun was playing on xbox, i was addicted on it, but nowadays, this hobby takes so much time, that i don´t have time for playing games...
Btw, I had a kit, where were those springy contacts, i have lost it, but interestingly, i still have the wires from it, hmmm...
Anyway, that´s how i started the electronics epidemy

[AG6QR]

My fondest Radio Shack memory is of the Science Fair 100-in-1 Electronic Project Kit I got for my birthday when I was 11 or so.  I still have it packed away in my garage.  It featured a "Space Age Integrated Circuit", which contained a grand total of one transistor, one diode, one capacitor, and four resistors, on a HUGE piece of substrate, covered by some sort of transparent potting compound or something.  The kit also had two germanium 2SB56 PNP transistors.  I spent endless hours building radios, sirens, buzzers, etc., mostly without understanding much about what was going on.  I need to dig it out and build some of those circuits again, and probe around with my oscilloscope this time.

Someone else put up a page about the kit which I had:

http://www.rcgrabbag.com/archives/radio-shack-100-in-1-electronic-project-kit


I really miss the Radio Shack of my youth.  But I'm ambivalent about the demise of today's mostly-cell-phone RadioShack with a little parts cabinet in the back.

[Dave Turner]

I knew the Tandy people well in my home town in the UK. Not because I could afford to buy much, but because we had a common interest. If I remember correctly the manager of the local store used to be the owner/manager of a government surplus electronics store (from whom I blagged stuff in the 60's).

Dave reminded me of two crude micronta units that I still have in my kit, which still have their place.

[DIPLover]

My fondest Radio Shack memory is of the Science Fair 100-in-1 Electronic Project Kit I got for my birthday when I was 11 or so.  I still have it packed away in my garage.  It featured a "Space Age Integrated Circuit", which contained a grand total of one transistor, one diode, one capacitor, and four resistors, on a HUGE piece of substrate, covered by some sort of transparent potting compound or something.  The kit also had two germanium 2SB56 PNP transistors.  I spent endless hours building radios, sirens, buzzers, etc., mostly without understanding much about what was going on.  I need to dig it out and build some of those circuits again, and probe around with my oscilloscope this time.

Someone else put up a page about the kit which I had:

http://www.rcgrabbag.com/archives/radio-shack-100-in-1-electronic-project-kit


I really miss the Radio Shack of my youth.  But I'm ambivalent about the demise of today's mostly-cell-phone RadioShack with a little parts cabinet in the back.

WOW, that little guy in the yellow striped shirt... You would NEVER see a kid with teeth and ears like that on a "modern" (80s+) product shot. He looks a little bit like a gremlin...

[Codemonkey]

I remember as a child standing staring for seemingly ages in the components bit when they were still Tandy in the UK. I always recall they stocked some sort of speech synthesiser IC that I fancied playing with. Didn't know enough about electronics at the time to be able to do anything useful with one even if I had one though.

Eventually I discovered the local wonder that is Bardwells in Sheffield. No flashy store front, just a counter, men in blue lab coats and racks and racks of just about any component you could ever want for far better prices than Tandy could ever offer. Don't think I ever set foot in one of their stores again after that!

[Tandy]

I always recall they stocked some sort of speech synthesiser IC that I fancied playing with.

That would have been the GI-SP0256 cat # 276-1784, sadly General Instruments don't exist any more or we would stock them just for that cool retro Stephen Hawking voice.

[Codemonkey]

Awesome, yeah that's the one, just found a youtube clip showing one in action:



Could have had loads of fun with one of those!

[DIPLover]

Awesome, yeah that's the one, just found a youtube clip showing one in action:



Could have had loads of fun with one of those!

Oooh this brings back ancient memories of the Speak and spell (though that was another chip).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speak_%26_Spell_%28toy%29

That thing was awesome (OK I was 3 !)

[ivan747]

I chacked the local phone book... I CAN'T BELIEVE Radioshack is still going on in Dominican Republic. They should have closed down a long while ago. In fact, by the lack of stores I thought they did close down. There were only about 5 stores at most in the entire city of Santo Domingo, population, 3 million. Now apparently, apparently... one store remains.

They should close down, really. They are just a loss for the franchise owners...
Now we got this thing called Steren, which is the latin american equivalent of Radio Shack. The Radio Shack model works okay in the latin american market, if prices are kept reasonable. Case in point: Steren. They sell A/V stuff, phone accesories, audio stuff, (basic) test equipment for electronics, networking, some electronics components (the clerks CAN get you chips, enclosures, chemicals and resistors) all in an air conditioned space.

Their competition consists of small shops on a market called "la 30" (on the 30 de Marzo street), which mostly sell equivalent stuff at cheaper prices, but they don't offer returns, exchanges, catalog, online or physical, air conditioning, cleanliness, they don't often sell  kits, no small enclosures, nor chemicals, so Steren sells some niche products locally, all under the same roof. I'm sure I could get all of that if I look hard enough in la 30 de Marzo, but you would have to walk a lot, ask a lot, waste time, have no safe parking space and still sometimes you won't find the thing you look for. Oh and these 30 de marzo stores sometimes sell some of the cheapest crappiest stuff I've ever seen, specially the cables an A/V stuff.At least Steren is not as abysmal and gives you some form of basic warranty.

Case in point: I went to search for some ULN2803 ICs. Searched the online catalog and found out Steren them. Went there and they had 2. I had to go to la 20 de marzo, walk more than a kilometer up-street in our hot and humid weather to find the missing 2 of those.

Second case in point: they sell (the most basic) scope probes. Others don't. I got a couple of BNC-alligator cables the other day. RGB LEDs too. Nobody else sells those.


TLDR:
For the general public (jeez, even for me, sometimes), Radioshack imitator called Steren is preferable, better than the local market.
Yet Radioshack was here before Steren couldn't do this even before Steren arrived to the country.

Conclusion:
Radioshack doesn't know what management is.

[Dave Turner]

Darren Grant - Tandy.

Where are you based now? I recall a good sized warehouse sited between Wolverhampton and Birmingham where I was invited to visit back in the 70's. It used to be visible from the M6. (For non UK people the  M6 is a motorway/ autobahn etc.).

[Tandy]

That is correct the main warehouse used to be the Birmingham area.

We are now in Oxford.

[rigrunner]

Sad to see them go.

My range doubler is still in working order though the leads are starting fade.

[Bob S]

My first job in electronics was doing repair work in the back room of Radio Shack in there biggest Boston store. I recall  riding my 10 speed bike back home with a few extra components in my bike pack (from time to time) . Years before, my dad bought me my first 6 transistor radio in that same store. How important I felt. They will be missed.

[mikeselectricstuff]

I remember taking a convoluted bus route back from school a few* times a month to collect my free battery from the Tandy in  Walthamstow High Street.

* of course I had multiple "Free battery club" cards and made sure it was a different person serving when I used each one!

And a touch dimmer kit I bought with instructions that were hilariously badly translated form some foreign language - the only bit I remember is that the filter inductor was for "depressing parasites"

[Kjelt]

Oh yeah the free battery card 

[David_AVD]

I always recall they stocked some sort of speech synthesiser IC that I fancied playing with.

That would have been the GI-SP0256 cat # 276-1784, sadly General Instruments don't exist any more or we would stock them just for that cool retro Stephen Hawking voice.

I think I still have a brand new one of those chips somewhere, still in the plastic box with datasheet.  Was there a companion chip as well - one did text-to-phenom and the other did the actual speech?

[Tandy]

Yes CTS256A-AL2 Text to Speech Controller, Cat # 276-1786

[wn1fju]

I actually found the box for this too.  Says "custom manufactured in Korea for Radio Shack."  Of course, the best part was that it was a kit and I got to solder a few wires and resistors.  Don't remember when I bought it.  The box has a price tag still on it that says $19.95 (US).

[poundy]

I got a "something-in-1" kit in a timber case for Christmas or a birthday when I was a kid. Don't know if that was from Tandy or Tricky Dick's, or somewhere else...

Battery Club got me in their doors more often than not as well.  Our "local" one was Orange NSW, a 40km drive from home, so about once a month was the maximum visit frequency I got, more often it was once every two months.  What was lucky was that DSE were just around the corner so I got to go to both places when we did go.  I had many a kit from DSE that I built over the years, none of which I can lay my hands on now though - I did find some kits and parts from both DSE + Tandy when I was clearing up some stuff my dad had, after he passed away. Ah the memories, soldering lessons, battery voltage testing on the tongue, and all kinds of other shenanigans

[GoldSrc]

I remember going to a Radio Shack with my dad only once when I was like 8-10 years old,
prices were higher than what we could get from local electronic stores.

I don't remember ever buying something else from RS after that.

[Dinsdale]

They gave me my first job in electronics. I could bitch about management, but, instead I'll tell you about a fortunate situation that occurred. I first worked as a tech in the TRS80 factory fixing boards that came off the assembly line. There were boards that you could get a good idea of where the problem was just my looking at the pattern of trash on the screen. Others were really tough and could take a lot of time. Some seemed impossible to fix and were sent to the "dog pile".
Well, one day management came and decreed that we would have to fix 10 boards a day. At first, I thought that would be impossible. But pretty quickly we realized that we could just fix the easy ones and send the though ones to the dog-pile after about 10 or 15 minutes. Turns out that you could fix 10 in at least 4 hours using this method.
What to do with the other 4 hours of the day? Work on your programming skills! I did some graphics stuff, some actual test code that helped fix systems, and just whatever else I could think up for an app. I really learned a lot about assembly language, digital electronics, and the Z80. I remember a software UART that I was especially proud of.
What did management think? They got their 10 boards a day (we threw in "bonus" boards so no suspicion was aroused). The dog-pile grew like crazy, but they never said anything. And they for sure could not tell if we were troubleshooting or programming or what.
So I traded a good education for crappy pay and being treated like dirt. Really not too bad for career start.

[TooOldForThis]

According to Forbes, we will wind up with 2400 stores that sell a mixture of Sprint and RadioShack merchandise.  It's probably Sprint that will select what RadioShack stuff remains in the stores.   Probably not Archer kits, Micronta  multimeters, or a single LED on little card for $2.99.
Google "RadioShack catalog".  They are all online.  I'm reliving my childhood.

[radiomog]

this showed up today, in timely fashion..

not sure if I should give it a thread of it's own or share here or the other RS/T thread...

so, here is where I'll share it...

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-worst-employee-of-the-worst-radioshack

[plexus]

Your video was blowing my mind because its where I got started too! However I got into it in a little bit of a different way. story, and music, here: https://soundcloud.com/musicofplexus/ode-to-radio-shack-thats-what-you-want-to-hear-v1

I also have my copy of Engineer's Notebook 1980 edition! the pages are very yellow. So I got into music and electronics through Radio Shack. My parents asked the assistant manager to help them put and electronics kit together for me. he designed a 7-segment LED counter for me to build and put all the parts and tools I would need together. they bought it and gave to me as a present. that was amazing. I made it and hit a major stumbling block. no 5V power supply! I had to go into the store to power it up to play with it.

I never really became anything of an electronics designer but I am handy with electronics and can do repairs etc. testing. and music is also a hobby. and that's my radio shack stories.

Oh and my friend and I were hired on quarterly weekends to help do store inventory. that was fun!

[Stonent]

* of course I had multiple "Free battery club" cards and made sure it was a different person serving when I used each one!

I would have lost all respect for you if you didn't