Radio Shack sale

And FWIW, apparently Radio Shack is corporately "on the ropes" having just dismissed its third financial officer.  Holiday sales are way down and they are trying to raise $100M to keep them afloat.

 

For instance:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101992454

 

Just information, and not to get into financial discussions.

I'll bet I haven't been in a RadioShack in a few years.

Used to be a good hobbyist store back in the 70's & 80's but since then they have shrunk their hobbyist electronics parts section to virtually nothing & try to sell big ticket items plus prices are sky high and usually out of stock

I can't recall the last time I went to RS, but it's been a long time.  They've become just another electronic appliance and toy store with phones, nothing I can't get elsewhere cheaper.

 

I'd better order the rest of my throw switches before they go tango-uniform!

I've been to radio shack a few times lately.  Personally I've been picking up size M barrel connectors.  They are a perfect fit for making connectors to go from mth brick output wires to two wire inputs for the tiu.  Also picked a dpdt switch for the Christmas layout. (Track to the center, tiu to one side, z750 to the other side.)  This lets me switch from conventional to dcs without crawling under the table. Also I found parts tpo repair a remote commander receiver there once.

I agree the don't carry many do it yourself parts anymore, but I usually find what I need to make things work.

Once you accept the tradeoff of local availability vs. limited selection and price, what's nice about RS is they are open weekends which is the only time some of us have to spend on hobbies.  I've found the RS website generally accurate about availability so you punch in your zip-code and find which stores have a 150-ohm resistor, a 1N4001 diode, or a 100uF capacitor to finish off a project or repair today.

I've taken to stocking a large supply of common parts so that anything that RS might have I should already have in quantity.

I buy electronic stuff from Radio Shack about once a month.  The big advantage is that I can get an item now.  Yes, it is more expensive than if I ordered it online but I don't need very much so convenience and speed is more important to me than price.

 

I hope that Radio Shack can find a way to remain in business.  I will miss them if they close.  

 

Joe

Radio Shack, like J.C. Penney store with clothes several years ago, has tried to re-market its image and appeal to a different market--selling cell phones, computers, etc.  It used to be a store for the electronic buff, like Olsen's used to be in Akron, Ohio, where one could buy raw loudspeakers, crossovers, and grill cloth to make speaker systems and many other electronic projects.  If you were a youngster making a science project, it was a great place back then to get parts--like a crystal diode for a crystal radio.  Gradually, RS got out of the audiophile business, no longer selling amplifiers, receivers, or CD players to my knowledge.  I go there for small parts, like clips and terminal strips.  That's it!

I remember back in the 50's & early 60's buying my Heath Kits from RS. I still have most and all still work.

 

God Bless,

"Pappy"

They still carry that stuff.

IMHO, Radio Shack isn't the place it used to be. They used to carry some neat items, and a great variety of electronic parts. They ended up devoting half their floor space to cell phones, etc. and abandoned a lot of what used to be their core products. No help from employees - they aren't paid much and don't know a transistor from a battery. I still go there for small parts, though.

I only buy parts at RS that are not easily obtained on Ebay.  

 

RS has 2-56 machine screws which are not readily available at most hardware stores.

 

 

by chance , which DPDT switch do you use ? some are off/on/off ..wouldnt i need a on/on/on DPDT toggle swich ?

Hi Vic,

By definition a DPDT controls two independent circuits.  That is one circuit is off and the other is on, depending on the handle position (left/right/up/down), or both are off if handle is in center click (if used) position.  An ON/ON/ON would imply that both circuits are interconnected in one position.  There are a few ON/ON/ON switches but they are "strangely" wired to achieve this function.

 

So the DCS would attach to one side of switch posts, the transformer (for conventional running) to other side of switch posts, and center posts would go to track  wires.

 

Gotta get my coffee to clear my foggy head.

Happy New Year!!!

Radio Shack is one of those vendors I just wish would do well, but I can't imagine they will be around much longer.  I think I even read a story where the CEO wondered how his stores were still open.

 

It'd be nice if they went back to their roots, and tried to make it as a local electronics / hobby store.  They could remove the silly cell phone section and put a fold up table and teach kids how to solder and to do electronics (LittleBits, Snap Circuits, etc.).  Home depot does once-a-month kids crafts, wouldn't it be nice if the shack did the same?  Heck, I'd even take a course or two their if they did classes to teach you how to build circuit boards and such.

 

Wishful thinking I guess, but the shack and a few others (e.g. Sears) will likely be a thing of the past really soon.

I went by the Radio Shack in our local mall this weekend and they had been converted to a "Outlet shop". I later swung into one nearer to our house looking for the battery that the other shop didn't have and found they were soon converting to an "Outlet Shop".

 

I was talking to the salesman there (who actually had a clue) and told him how I once rebuilt a TV using RS's in-store tube checker, which made me feel real old.

 

Smell of death is strong on them, but I did score an 8 pack of AA lithium's for cheap.

 

 

 

Any idea what "outlet shop" means?

I worked at a Radio Shack back in 1975, when it was a real electronics store. They got into consumer electronics and that drove off the hobbyists and do-it-yourself customer base. I went into a real electronics store a few months back and commented to the owner "I feel like I've come home" as I picked up the same kind of stuff I used to sell when I worked at RS. He said "Abandoned by Radio Shack?" to which I replied yes.

 

There are on-line suppliers like Mouser, Allied and All Electronics, so I can still pretty get the electronics for layout projects pretty easily, but I really miss when RS was a real electronics store. I don't think they'll be around for more than a couple of more years.

Cedar Rapids has a real electronics store where you can get Jameco and NTE parts as well as wire solder irons etc.  But its just a matter of time before they close.  With Mouser and Digikey having everything you could possibly want, the mom and pop electronics store will be a thing of the past.

 

In my day I built Laffayette shortwave radio, Heathkit tuners and TVs etc.  Learned how to solder wires at age 6 (solder gun not iron) until they were consistently silvery not dull pitted blobs connections.  As soon as I could read, I read popular Electronics and other magazines (no I was not Einstein brained, just loved electronics).  Also helped I had an uncle who had radio shop and gave me old TUBE (you know those are transistors that glow orange  ) radios to fixup.  Repaired radios in high school, helped a teacher get his PhD by keeping his electronic gizmos working long enough to gather data for his thesis.

 

Sorry Rambling, Need COFFEE! NOW!!

Happy new year.

Everything in the store was 50% off which is how I got the batteries. The guy told me they would be getting slow moving merchandise from the other stores in the area and sell it there.

 

The problem though is that there are only 4 stores in the area and now 2 of them are "Outlet Stores". That does not sound like a long term business model.

Radio Shack and Sears are both on most business analysts list of stores most likely to be gone soon. I will probably feel a bit of a sentimental tug at the heart when they are gone, but both stores are no longer ones I regularly frequent.

Both Sears and RS mentioned here : 6 Brands That May not Make it Through 2015

I used to be a card-carrying member.  IIRC they discontinued this "club" maybe 20 years ago.

 

There appears to be a growing bricks-and-mortar chain called Batteries Plus Bulbs - apparently now in 47 states.  The one near me used to be called just Batteries Plus.  There must have been a momentous decision at RS Headquarters where they banked on the homerun (cellphones) rather than bunts and singles (batteries, bulbs, cables, connectors).

I had the same card as a kid, thought it was super cool to get a free battery

 

Now having read the "What we have to remember about non-hobbyists" thread, of the cultural bias against repairing (seemingly simple to fix) stuff, one has to wonder if this goes hand-in hand with RS's slide into irrelevance. Could they even save themselves by going back to what they once were?

 

Last thing I bought from them were some XMODS R/C "kits". I put the word "kits" in quotes because even the present models are dumbed-down compared to their predecessors. But, these are pretty much the only R/C cars with digital-proportional controls that aren't hobby-grade kits where you bolt everything together.

 

You'd think tech advances mean that toy-grade R/C would have improved since oh, the 1980's--but not really. True there are almost no vehicles that are forward-only, or cannot steer in reverse (or the dreaded "goes straight forward, turns in reverse). But almost all of them nowadays are "full-speed-and off" throttle, and hard left/hard right/straight ahead steering. Proportional controls were more common on toy-grade R/C 25 years ago then they are today, believe it or not.

 

The XMODS "kits" I bought on sale ($20 each) are going to be dismantled for their receivers, speed controllers and steering mechanisms, to retrofit a pair of Chinese R/C transit buses gifted with the kind of on-off control described above (but otherwise unique because they're not available in the US...and who in their right mind makes an R/C toy out of a bus?). Afterwards they should have precise enough control to parallel-park 'em.

 

</offtopic>

 

---PCJ

Bringing an old thread back to life, here is a Bloomberg article tracing the rise and fall of Radio Shack. Good read though sad when you think of what they used to be.  Somewhat sounds like what Lionel went through and almost was extinguished....

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...slow-motion-collapse