I'd be satisfied with just one as long as the inventory was kept up.
My experience with Radio Shack is that everything is way overpriced but it is a good place to find hard to get batteries.
Back in the day Radio Shack was a Mecca for young budding inventors and electrical engineers.
I’m not sure why they still exist.
They have some things that I can’t find anywhere else, but I don’t like the attitude of the people they have working there, so I shop online where possible.
I won’t miss them.
RS used to carry all kinds of electronic parts..All of that went bye bye 10+ years ago.
I learned on my own how to replace transistors, capacitors etc., do basic troubleshooting and have save thousands in repairs over the years.
I get my electrical components on-line now.
And I don’t have to deal with 27 year olds who don’t know zip about anything..
RS has phones and Chinese trinket gadgets.......When the entire country is awash in cell phones and cheap gadgets..Did RS executives go to business school to learn how to destroy a business?
I went in a couple of years ago and asked for a capacitor the saleschild looked at me like I was speaking Martian
the population of the country barely has any capability to understand the purpose of circuit boards, diodes or capacitors let alone how to design a circuit to utilize them.
we’ve dumbed down the population to sub third world status
I was in Radio Shack last month. Needed some kind of overpriced stereo whatsit connector piece.
Half of the store was cellphones and possibly cellphone services.
There was also a display of vibrators (uh, personal massagers) in the middle of the room as well.
I guess they know how to get their battery sales up.
It was due to a lack of men interested in or capable of paying for electronics parts for projects long ago. Then Radio Shack started using politically correct advertising and selling more finished electronics items in an effort to sell more to women. Meanwhile, smaller parts with different mounting technologies were used to make smaller appliances/gadgets.
You know, I actually thought of going to Radio Shack today. I wanted to buy a joystick controller for Flight Simulator.
But when I thought of going through the hassle of declining go give my name and address to the salesperson, I decided to go to Best Buy instead.
Got it for $28.
I really don’t see much reason for Radio Shack to exist anymore as brick-and-mortar locations.
Having said that, I am in the process of digitizing my old cassette tape collection, most of which were recorded in the 70’s and are thus at or near 40 years old. The tapes that have held up the best over the years? Radio Shack Supertapes.
Radio Shack was a great chain when they sold electronics parts. There was another chain that sold electronics kits, what was its name Zenith, or something?
We have a Radio Shack in our small town. I have been in there a few times looking for things I can’t get at the local Wallymart but I’ve yet to buy anything there yet. When they have had what I was looking for they were 2 to 3x what I was willing to pay. When I really needed it, I could get it off the net for much, much less.
Their problem is they have lost their reason for existing. Their niche came from supplying electronics hobbyists with things that couldn’t be found elsewhere. Time moved on and electronics became too specialized and miniaturized for the hobbyist component business and they no longer have any consumer brands they can differentiate from competition. They are in a death spiral, charging premium prices stuff you can get elsewhere.
I think it was Radio Shack that sold those goofy Tandy computers that you hooked up to a cassette recorder. (IIRC, that was how it worked.) Early ‘80s maybe?
Back in the 1970s and early 1980s, Radio Shack was one of the greatest places to go. The stores back then were exploding with gear from CB radios to shortwave sets to do-it-yourself Heath kits. The shelves were teeming with radios (yes, Radio Shack used to sell radios). When personal computers started making the scene, Radio Shack was on the cutting edge. I think for a few years, they sold more personal computers, including their own brand (TRS-80), than anybody else.
About the mid 1980s, they started going downhill. Especially when they used to make you fill out a complicated form every time you bought something (even if it was just a battery) so they could put you on their mailing list. Even if you said you were already on the list, they wanted the form filled out anyway. I think the employees were rated on the percentage of forms they got the customers to fill out. It was all very obnoxious.
Nowadays they are a sad shell of what they used to be. Mostly staffed with pimple-faced teenagers who know very little about electronics but they push you very hard to get a cellphone with a two-year plan. Apparently they are comped heavily on how many cellphone contracts they sell and that is the only way they can make extra money.
If I had wanted a cheap one I could have paid 5.95 for a Chinese import.
