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The Lost Tribes of RadioShack: Tinkerers Search for New Spiritual Home
- jasonlbaptiste 17y agoThere has to be room to fill this gap. Radioshack still has some cables I've needed, but it's missed some as well: ie- mini sata cables for slim optical drives.
- sriram_sun 17y agohttp://www.sparkfun.com/ http://www.sparkfun.com/ - Best place on the web IMO. Great resources and support. They are incredible. The founder started the company right out of college (CU Boulder). He gave a talk in a kick-ass embedded design course I was taking in CU. I think they've been around for 6-8 years and had been growing at 100% every 6 months for a while. Don't know how it they are doing right now (pretty well I'm sure). The web site is always chock full of nicely organized articles and videos.
- SpacemanSpiff 17y agoAgreed. Their CEO Nathan Seidle gave a talk in one of my classes at CU and seems like a great guy. We also took a tour of Sparkfun and their facility is really amazing. They have a great selection of parts/gadgets available for "hardware hackers".
- mkramlich 17y agoI'll second the recommendation of SparkFun as heir apparent, and add Make magazine.
- yellowbkpk 17y agoSparkFun is awesome, but sometimes I need to have that electronic piece right away so I can finish my project this weekend. It would be awesome if there was enough of a market to have electronics parts stores in most cities.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- alt219 17y agoI highly recommend You-Do-It Electronics Center in Needham, MA for those in the Greater Boston metro area. It's better even than the golden years of Radio Shack. If you need parts, this is your store. http://www.youdoitelectronics.com/ http://www.youdoitelectronics.com/ Edit: added link Edit: moved comment from top-level to this thread; seemed more apropos
- ericb 17y agoUntil I went in, I had imagined You-Do-It as like a make-your-own pottery type of place, except with instructors and kits showing you how to make radios and toasters instead of pottery. This idea was very exciting to me...
- anigbrowl 17y ago“You walk into a regular RadioShack and it’s become like a neurosis,” Cohen says. “‘Sir, can I sell you a cell phone today? How old is your cell phone? What about your family, do they have cell phones?’” Depressingly true. Of course they have to worry about the bottom line, but I really doubt the long-term future viability of becoming a mini Best Buy - if all they sell is mid-priced consumer goods, I have no incentive to buy there rather than on eBay for. Where they are really useful to me are for speedy supply of things like batteries, media, and accessories (eg specialist cables) which I might need at short notice and in unusual quantities or configurations (compared to consumers). I have a feeling that that won't last, though.
- jws 17y agoI've mostly solved the cable problem using monoprice.com. They are about 25% the price of a radioshack or other intown store. So when I place an order I buy 3 of everything I might need and keep them in a box, including a couple really long examples of each cable. It's cheaper for me to keep inventory than to buy local. I use the long ones temporarily if I run out of "right length" and swap when the next order comes in. The best part is I don't have to listen to the nice young men try to upsell me to gold plated connectors. It has lower resistance! I swear I'll sprain my eyes if I have to keep rolling them like that. Don't miss the iPhone sync cables at 1/12th Apple's list price. You know your family needs these.
- nitrogen 17y agoUpvoted for how relevant this solution is to my own cable needs. I definitely don't miss the cashier trying to convince an electronics entrepreneur with engineering in the blood that 6' $80 HDMI cables have a noticeable quality difference. Still, I haven't found a good source for prototype project boxes in Radio Shack's price range. Can anyone recommend a low-cost rapid-prototyping plastic case manufacturer?
- jdeeny 17y agohttp://www.budind.com/ http://www.budind.com/ http://www.boxenclosures.com/ http://www.boxenclosures.com/ http://www.polycase.com/ http://www.polycase.com/ Polycase is carried by Allied (www.alliedelec.com) and has some inexpensive, decent quality plastic boxes for around $3-4. I thought of those immediately after reading your post.
- iamwil 17y agooddly enough, there is a market for do-it-yourself still. I don't know how big, but interest in sparkfun, make magazine, makerbot, and arduino signifies it's anything but dead to me.
- paulgerhardt 17y agoLimor Fried (founder of Adafruit) gave an ignite talk that was posted a few days ago. From the looks of it, most Open Source Hardware outfits are grossing around a million a year. http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/05/03/million-dollar-baby-businesses-designing-and-selling-open-source-hardware-making-millions/ http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/05/03/million-dollar-baby-...
- thunk 17y agoThat's precisely where Radio Shack should be focusing its effort. They should outfit their stores with high-end 3d printers and fabrication machines and retool themselves as a sort of Hardware Kinko's. Someone's going to fill that niche Real Soon Now, regardless.
- ebiester 17y agoIt's still too soon. That said, when it is time, Radio Shack can always move into that space too. However, what's more likely is that fab machines will come down in price quickly enough that people can have their own.
- rbanffy 17y agoLarger 3D printers are still a bit off. The mechanics get increasingly tricky when you move beyond a certain size. That said, modern ink-jets would be marvels of precision mechanics when I was in college. Things change in a decade or so.
- thunk 17y agoSooner than you may think [1]. And we all have printers in our home, but even now go to specialty shops for our more exotic or higher volume jobs. Why would it be any different with 3D printing? And since, in this vision, they'll also be stocking all the electronics prototyping hardware, they'll be a one-stop shop for the emergent DIY robotics scene. Radio Shack should absolutely be planning for this now if they have aspirations in this direction. [1] http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=3d+printer+cost+dropping&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai= http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=3d+printer+cost+dro...
- sheldonwt 17y ago"But his shop is a lone outpost; in a single generation, the American who built, repaired, and tinkered with technology has evolved into an entirely new species: the American who prefers to slip that technology out of his pocket and show off its killer apps. Once, we were makers. Now most of us are users." So humbling and true. Most people will throw out any given piece of technology rather than try and repair it. And speak of building something yourself, that's practically unheard of. Maybe it's only people around me who think and act this way, but I'm 22 and all these people aren't going anywhere.
- joezydeco 17y agoSo you're probably too young to remember Heathkit, then. That's what separated the men from the boys.
- yesimahuman 17y agoI really don't agree with this. Maybe we were able to fix simple electronics. Now, you really have to know what you are doing to mess with an iPhone (and willing to void the warranty). I don't see anything bad with the trend. Most people wouldn't have "made" anything before, and they won't now. There are just more users in general.
- rimantas 17y agoI doubt that is true. What would the ratio number_of_people_capable_to_repair_TV_set/number_of_people watching_TV compare to number_of_people_programming_for_smartphones/number_of_people_using_smarphones? My guess is that the latter is much bigger.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- grinich 17y agoHere's a link to the non-paginated version: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/04/ff_radioshack/all/1 http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/04/ff_radioshack/all/1
- joeyh 17y agoMaybe the trick is to think outside the mass consumer box. My small town (pop 30,000) has a electronics parts store (part of a regional chain of 5 in Tennessee) that seems to do well catering to contracters in electronic-related fields (security, A/V, electricians, medical, etc). So, when I shop there, there's a different feel and more paperwork than a consumer-level store like Rat Shack. (Also free popcorn.) But they still have shelves and shelves, and bins and bins of board-level parts. Just look at these pics. http://shieldselectronics.com/bpics.htm http://shieldselectronics.com/bpics.htm
- joezydeco 17y agoThe internet and Digi-Key replaced RadioShack for me a long time ago. Digi-Key sells everything, and will let you buy in onesies and twosies without screwing you on the price. Maybe Monoprice for cables, but that's rare. The one time I needed a DB-9 gender changer in a hurry and paid freaking $20 for it was the day I decided I was done with RadioShack. You served a great purpose, dear friend, but times have changed. I still have my Pocket PC-1 for the memories.
- rbanffy 17y agoIt's not the same as walking into a physical store. You get an awful lot of ideas by looking at what's available, kind of improvisation engineering. I am very happy to live within walking distance from São Paulo's "electronics district" (it's called Santa Efigênia, for the name of one of the streets around which lots of electronics (some of very uncertain origin), component and junkyards abound. Many items carry heavy import taxes and counterfeit items are sold on the street. I tend to go to the adjacent streets where the least mainstream stores are located. Those are far more interesting. Walking there is always an expedition to a strange land. I usually get the stuff I planned to get, but often with lots of stuff I didn't knew I needed when I left home. I know physical stores cannot compete with the internet and its zero-friction-commerce, but those places will be missed when they go.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- sekou 17y agoI think emerging economies in the world would take much stronger to the original concept of Radio Shack. Since we've grown a "throw away instead of fix" economy, the U.S. doesn't create nearly as much demand anymore... But there are plenty of places that would.
- rbanffy 17y agoSadly, "trow away instead of fix" is becoming the norm for any electronic device. Working with SMDs by hand is doeable, but whoever can do it should go to med school and become a brain surgeon.
- sachinag 17y agoReally? There isn't a link to http://www.octopart.com http://www.octopart.com here? Goddammit folks! Go find your parts on Octopart and help a YC company out.
- joezydeco 17y agoWhy isn't Digi-Key in the vendor list? That would help. Otherwise, very very nice site. Will use more often!
- sam 17y agoWe'd love to get Digi-Key on the vendor list but they've chosen not to list with us yet. Please let them know you want to see them on Octopart: webmaster -at- digikey.us
- noonespecial 17y agoHere's some nostalgia for all. Its all the Radio Shack catalogs from the wayback in a beautifully done from. http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/index.html http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/index.html
- ck2 17y agoAnyone remember Heathkit? The real DIY shop?
- rbanffy 17y agoIt's a classic story of management by managers. You just can't hire any generic executive and expect it to work. If all the manager knows is management, all the manager will see are numbers. Some things are the soul of the company. We don't expect a psychiatrist to be able to run a restaurant.
- slapshot 17y agoFry's. Period. It's a west coast thing, but it should be a clue that the first one was in the heart of Silicon Valley. Aisle after aisle of computer components, electrical components, and truly random stuff (Mace next to hard drives, LED glowsticks next to cases, etc). An electrophile's dream.
- naturalized 17y agoFry's are not all the same. The only one that has a decent components section is in Palo Alto. Other stores, in San Jose, Mountain View etc do not have anything.
- kijiki 17y agoThere is no Fry's in Mountain View. You probably mean the one in Sunnyvale. Which has a freaking original Varian Magnetron.
- wooster 17y agoReally? It's fairly rare that I'm able to find anything I'm looking for at Fry's (in Palo Alto). I've had better luck at Jameco. Better yet? Online (if I'm not in a hurry).
- Gormo 17y agoWhen I was in high school in the late '90s, I found an old discarded TRS-80 Model 4 that apparently still worked. I wanted to tinker with it, but it had no hard drive, and I had no software, so I walked into the local Radio Shack store, and asked the manager if they still supported the TRS-80. The manager special ordered a copy of TRS-DOS on 5.25" floppies from the Tandy warehouse at no charge, gave me a catalog of the software and peripherals still available, and told me to come back whenever I needed support or information about the system. It's a pity they're no longer like this. They can't really compete against Best Buy, CompUSA, Circuit City, and all of the online consumer electronics stores, and now they no longer really serve the niche that was the basis of their original success. I'll miss Radio Shack.