For RadioShack, the end is near

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/09/12/for-radioshack ^ | 12SEP2014 | Justin Moyer

[Jack Hydrazine]

Gentlemen and gentlewomen of a certain age harbor fond memories of trips to RadioShack. In days of yore, ham radios and homemade guitar amplifiers would emerge from the mysterious jumble of wires and audio components hawked by this unpretentious electronic retailer.

Whatever one’s view of this American institution with about 27,000 employees, it is near death. On Thursday, RadioShack warned that it may file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

[Nowhere Man]

I remember the days when they had Arthur Fiedler, the famous conductor, hawk their stereos.

[Nowhere Man]

One of my friends has a lot of vacuum tubes and he has one of the tubes KDKA used in the 1920’s.

[Salvation]

And some of the first computers too.

[Professional Engineer]

Well, we are not all geeks building our own walkie-talkies instead of buying them ready to go out of the box.

What!?!?!? Soccer blue.

I used to wander through I brainstorm. I ended up designing a circuit around one chip I found in the early 90's. I got an article published (and some cash) out of that one. I may have been able to patent the device, but was a poor broke college kid at the time.

[Jet Jaguar]

I built alarm systems from the stuff there. You can buy better stuff now from China that did what mine did in the 90’s. Cheaper as well.

[Professional Engineer]

Fry's is the righteous replacement for the Radio Shack store. They have everything RS ever had, and more.

Fry's does have a lot of stuff. I dislike being treated like a shop lefter just to exit the store. What the heck am I going to stuff into my bag between the checkout and the door?

I like the local electronic surplus store a lot. All kinds of treasure to be had there.

[gunsequalfreedom]

Patents are not all they are billed to be. Look at Polaroid suit against Kodak over the instant film. Would have been farther ahead to put the effort into marketing.

[usconservative]

What’s funny about RS going down is I still have one of their DX-160 shortwave receivers that still works (somewhat) and needs some parts to rebuild it Ian put it back to 100% working condition.

Wouldn’t you know, some 35 years later I can still find about half of the capacitors needed to restore it at my local RS. The rest I’ll likely order online f om a supplier or take a drive to Frys to get the rest.