RadioShack co-branding of stores with Sprint wins court approval

Reuters ^ | 3/31/2015 | Nick Brown and Tom Hals

[mac_truck]

A plan to salvage RadioShack Corp’s RSHCQ.PK business by co-branding most of its 1,740 surviving stores with cellular phone provider Sprint Corp (S.N) earned U.S. bankruptcy court approval on Tuesday, ending four days of contested court hearings.

The stores are what survived of more than 4,000 outlets after RadioShack went bankrupt in February. Founded in 1921, the chain was a go-to retailer for electronics before becoming increasingly irrelevant in the digital age.

Judge Brendan Shannon, in Delaware bankruptcy court, approved a sale of the stores to the Standard General hedge fund, which plans to keep most of them open under a deal in which Sprint will occupy one-third of each space.

The sale could preserve about 7,500 jobs, and allow RadioShack to stay in business, a big challenge for retailers who file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

[ntnychik]

I last went to Radio Shack a few years ago to buy a radio. They had FM only. Good try keeping me from conservative talk radio. Never mind, RS.

[OldMissileer]

Well, in that case, I suspect you have an even BIGGER bin of obsolete cables,

I sure have one of those bins.

[catnipman]

“And to have a rack of 1 MB core memory.”

I have a 1970’s DEC PDP-11 H214 8Kx16 core board. Bought it for $50.00 about 10 years ago from a friend who had several.

It’s a really cool piece of computing history, what with the hand-threaded arrays of magnetic cores. Apparently only females had the patience and dexterity to do the threading. There’s an x, y and sense/inhibit wire threaded through each nearly-invisible magnetic donut cores.

[backwoods-engineer]

I’ve ordered from all 3. Very hobbyist-friendly. Even though I am a professional and do it for a living, electronics is still a hobby :-)

[Myrddin]

I've been building electronics projects since kindergarten. In Scouts, I earned the electricity, electronics and radio merit badges. It wasn't until I graduated from college that I had time to pursue some licensing. I have an Extra Class ham license and First Class Radiotelephone license with Ship's RADAR endorsement (grandfathered to GROL). After grad school, I made a decent living caring for all of the electronics on 180 tuna boats plus base stations, work boats, freighters, naval vessels and pleasure boats. It was good "hands on" experience. I can design to the component level and write firmware to drive the electronics. Writing software for large scale systems is what pays the bills, but I still enjoy building hardware projects. I have PI, PIC and Arduino boards in addition to a few PC104 boards.

[fireman15]

You are much more advance than I am. My favorite author as a child was Alfred P. Morgan. In addition to his books he was considered a pioneer in radio and electronics. He wrote a many science and technology books for boys. He was actually born in 1889 and died in 1972 so he wasn’t really around for the “digital age”. It seems like many guys I know who are into “ham” radio also loved Mr. Morgan’s books.

[Myrddin]

I read of lot of Tesla starting in 2nd grade. I learned all the classic schematic symbols in 2nd grade too. Morgan's books may have been part of my reading. I didn't make a point of comprehending circuit operations at the level of being able to design new ones until I joined Scouts and had to build/troubleshoot my merit badge circuits. My college physics (electricity/magnetism) classes cemented the theory. Study for my ham/commercial licenses was pretty simple at that point. Just had to add rules/regulations to the theory. Ham radio is a great way to get some "hands on". That's where I developed my expertise in RF communications, networking protocols and UNIX kernel device drivers. The "play" time translated directly into skills applicable at work.

Radio Shack had lots of nice example books done by Forest Mims. Steve Ciarcia was another of my favorite electronics hobby writers.

[Myrddin]

Alfred Morgan

The titles look very familiar :-)