3 ms·

Mr. Roach's (and Radio Shack's) story is amazing and largely unknown in 2022. It's interesting to imagine what might have been if Radio Shack (or Commodore, etc

Mr. Roach's (and Radio Shack's) story is amazing and largely unknown in 2022. It's interesting to imagine what might have been if Radio Shack (or Commodore, etc.) had managed to be as successful as Apple as a computer company. It's too bad that Radio Shack no longer exists - they didn't serve much of a purpose as a phone accessory store, but their prior incarnation selling computers, electronics, stereo and TV equipment, toys, educational kits, and components seems like it was was a lot more interesting. At one of the last Maker Faires, I recall a Radio Shack executive saying that they were planning on adding a DIY store section supporting things like 3D printing, microcontrollers, and electronics kits, but sadly that didn't seem to materialize (and probably it wasn't a large enough market to be successful with thousands of small stores.) I'd like to think that there's still an opportunity somewhere for small shops like Radio Shack (or larger stores like Fry's) that sell cool and useful electronic stuff (maybe with fast local delivery!) but it's probably hard to compete with Walmart on one hand and Amazon on the other. I'm actually surprised that Best Buy seems to be hanging on somehow.

cf100clunk 5y ago
> It's too bad that Radio Shack no longer exists As a kid, pouring through the latest Heathkit catalogue was a joy, as was rummaging through an old-school Radio Shack store for new stuff to put on the bread board. In later years such expeditions included Fry's in Sunnyvale EDIT: Palo Alto, actually. When Radio Shack put TRS-80s in every store it wasn't long before kids of all ages with a bit of BASIC knowledge snuck loops of obscenities onto those screens before sales staff would finally notice and interrupt. In later years it seemed that every Radio Shack store everywhere had an endless loop of Top Gun or Star Wars videos on endless loop. I cannot help but remember most people calling the TRS-80 the "Trash 80" even though nobody I knew disliked the machines, per se. RIP John Roach, marketing visionary.
datavirtue 5y ago
Tandy, and that computer in the pic with John (Tandy 1000ish-- thier first PC clone), made my childhood. I was lucky enough to have a hard drive expansion card and later purchased a brand new Tandy color EGA monitor with my own money for it. Nothing online, all the time spent learning every nook and cranny of numerous DOS versions, Norton utilities, and BASIC. I spent years (12 to 14) at 3.77mhz and loved every minute of it.
- michaelhoffman 5y ago
  Looks like a Tandy 1000 SX.
birdyrooster 5y ago
Best Buy hangs on with high margin white glove service, product replacement/repair programs, etc
- chipotle_coyote 5y ago
  Maybe, but over the last few years I've taken to checking Best Buy's web site in preference to Amazon's for things that seem like they're in the general category of "things Best Buy probably sells." They're usually competitively priced, and occasionally have even undercut Amazon. (This is especially true if you're looking for brands you've even remotely heard of, as opposed to ICEDIO, ORNARTO, JASBON, COOLQO, WTYOO, SINIANL and the like. All of those names are real "companies" on Amazon at the moment, by the way.) And, Best Buy offers something else Amazon doesn't: local stores. I can order something and go pick it up. I think Best Buy survives in no small part because (a) despite all the jokes about the way they used to upsell overpriced printer cables, they've often had a pretty good selection and decent salespeople, and (b) they managed to adapt to the online world in time to save themselves, which Radio Shack -- and, somewhat incredibly, Silicon Valley megastore darling Fry's -- manifestly did not.
  - fibonachos 5y ago
    After receiving a “Logitech” webcam in sketchy packaging from Amazon last year, I promptly returned it and ordered the same model from Best Buy for local pick up. The retail packaging was completely different and the webcam itself felt heavier. The price difference was all of about $15… well worth the peace of mind. That was likely my last electronics purchase from Amazon.
    - tomrod 5y ago
      I've had a similar experience with Amazon. These days it's pretty much books or things I can't be concerned about if they are knockoff. Electronics? No way. Too high of chance for grey or black market quality stuff.
dleslie 5y ago
When I was a kid/teen Radio Shack was _the only_ place in town where you could purchase discrete electronic components. There is now no longer a single store in that same town that sells discrete components; the only way to source them is online.
opencl 5y ago
Microcenter is probably the closest thing left to that niche now. They have pretty decent 3D printing and DIY electronics sections.
bcrescimanno 5y ago
Best Buy made some really good moves about a decade ago that have paid off for them; I think (one of) the biggest is investing heavily in Buy Online - Pickup in Store (BOPIS). After not having shopped there for years due to online shopping like NewEgg and Amazon, I found myself a few times needing something today and being able to put in an order and pick it up an hour later was really helpful. I still don't use them nearly as often as true online competition; but, they are useful for that. As an aside, some of them have gone to the "Store within a store" concept where, instead of ill-informed blue-shirted kids wandering around aimlessly, you can find yourself in the LG TV section staffed by an LG-trained salesperson who can at least answer general questions about the units.
chipotle_coyote 5y ago
> It's interesting to imagine what might have been if Radio Shack (or Commodore, etc.) had managed to be as successful as Apple as a computer company. I used to half-joke that Radio Shack always tended to be either a few years too late or a few years too early with their products. For example, the TRS-80 Model 16 was a 68000-based multiuser Xenix (Microsoft's version of Unix) workstation in 1982. The 6809-based TRS-80 Color Computer also had a multiuser, multitasking operating system, OS-9, available for it. Meanwhile, over in the original Z80-based line of the TRS-80 Model I/III/4, they had a "luggable" computer, the Model 4P, that would have blown the Osborne 1 away...if it had come out two years earlier. And, their first MS-DOS machine, the Tandy 2000, zigged when the market zagged: it was MS-DOS compatible but not PC compatible. It was also possibly the only computer from a major company that used the 80186 CPU. There are still some oddities about the Model 4 I remember fondly. The operating system for it was inspired by OS/360, I think, rather than whatever inspired CP/M and MS-DOS, so it had a different flavor -- "/" as the extension separator, JCL files instead of BAT files, and a very different way of handling devices. But it also had device redirection, which was kind of incredible for a machine of its time and capability. Going back and looking at what the last operating system shipped for it, LS-DOS 6.3, could do circa 1983 is pretty interesting -- and also speculating on what might have happened if Radio Shack had stuck with that path. (I can't find the specifics anymore, but there were a couple "SVC calls" -- the API that programs used to talk to the OS -- that were clearly meant to support a multitasking version of the OS that never came to be.) Anyway, other than Mr. Roach, I don't think they were a very forward-looking company in most respects. It's fun to speculate what might have happened -- one of mine was, what if Radio Shack had bought the Amiga and built a new OS for it around the 68K version of OS-9? They were better managed than Commodore, surely, right? Well, yeah, probably, but that's a pretty low bar to clear. They could probably have kept a Tandy Computers division going as a PC clone maker if they'd played their cards right, but they sold all that off by the mid-1990s, IIRC, and kept missing every boat from that point on. Ironic footnote: Tandy Leather, the craft company that birthed the once-giant Tandy Corporation, is actually still around.
- Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  Last time I was in the town I grew up in, I noticed one of the Radio Shack locations had been converted in a Tandy Leather. I remember as a kid being told that location had been a Tandy Leather store before it switched to Radio Shack. Fun to see it go full circle.

cf100clunk 5y ago

> It's too bad that Radio Shack no longer exists As a kid, pouring through the latest Heathkit catalogue was a joy, as was rummaging through an old-school Radio Shack store for new stuff to put on the bread board. In later years such expeditions included Fry's in Sunnyvale EDIT: Palo Alto, actually. When Radio Shack put TRS-80s in every store it wasn't long before kids of all ages with a bit of BASIC knowledge snuck loops of obscenities onto those screens before sales staff would finally notice and interrupt. In later years it seemed that every Radio Shack store everywhere had an endless loop of Top Gun or Star Wars videos on endless loop. I cannot help but remember most people calling the TRS-80 the "Trash 80" even though nobody I knew disliked the machines, per se. RIP John Roach, marketing visionary.

datavirtue 5y ago

Tandy, and that computer in the pic with John (Tandy 1000ish-- thier first PC clone), made my childhood. I was lucky enough to have a hard drive expansion card and later purchased a brand new Tandy color EGA monitor with my own money for it. Nothing online, all the time spent learning every nook and cranny of numerous DOS versions, Norton utilities, and BASIC. I spent years (12 to 14) at 3.77mhz and loved every minute of it.

michaelhoffman 5y ago
Looks like a Tandy 1000 SX.

birdyrooster 5y ago

Best Buy hangs on with high margin white glove service, product replacement/repair programs, etc

chipotle_coyote 5y ago
Maybe, but over the last few years I've taken to checking Best Buy's web site in preference to Amazon's for things that seem like they're in the general category of "things Best Buy probably sells." They're usually competitively priced, and occasionally have even undercut Amazon. (This is especially true if you're looking for brands you've even remotely heard of, as opposed to ICEDIO, ORNARTO, JASBON, COOLQO, WTYOO, SINIANL and the like. All of those names are real "companies" on Amazon at the moment, by the way.) And, Best Buy offers something else Amazon doesn't: local stores. I can order something and go pick it up. I think Best Buy survives in no small part because (a) despite all the jokes about the way they used to upsell overpriced printer cables, they've often had a pretty good selection and decent salespeople, and (b) they managed to adapt to the online world in time to save themselves, which Radio Shack -- and, somewhat incredibly, Silicon Valley megastore darling Fry's -- manifestly did not.
- fibonachos 5y ago
  After receiving a “Logitech” webcam in sketchy packaging from Amazon last year, I promptly returned it and ordered the same model from Best Buy for local pick up. The retail packaging was completely different and the webcam itself felt heavier. The price difference was all of about $15… well worth the peace of mind. That was likely my last electronics purchase from Amazon.
  - tomrod 5y ago
    I've had a similar experience with Amazon. These days it's pretty much books or things I can't be concerned about if they are knockoff. Electronics? No way. Too high of chance for grey or black market quality stuff.

dleslie 5y ago

When I was a kid/teen Radio Shack was _the only_ place in town where you could purchase discrete electronic components. There is now no longer a single store in that same town that sells discrete components; the only way to source them is online.

opencl 5y ago

Microcenter is probably the closest thing left to that niche now. They have pretty decent 3D printing and DIY electronics sections.

bcrescimanno 5y ago

Best Buy made some really good moves about a decade ago that have paid off for them; I think (one of) the biggest is investing heavily in Buy Online - Pickup in Store (BOPIS). After not having shopped there for years due to online shopping like NewEgg and Amazon, I found myself a few times needing something today and being able to put in an order and pick it up an hour later was really helpful. I still don't use them nearly as often as true online competition; but, they are useful for that. As an aside, some of them have gone to the "Store within a store" concept where, instead of ill-informed blue-shirted kids wandering around aimlessly, you can find yourself in the LG TV section staffed by an LG-trained salesperson who can at least answer general questions about the units.

chipotle_coyote 5y ago

> It's interesting to imagine what might have been if Radio Shack (or Commodore, etc.) had managed to be as successful as Apple as a computer company. I used to half-joke that Radio Shack always tended to be either a few years too late or a few years too early with their products. For example, the TRS-80 Model 16 was a 68000-based multiuser Xenix (Microsoft's version of Unix) workstation in 1982. The 6809-based TRS-80 Color Computer also had a multiuser, multitasking operating system, OS-9, available for it. Meanwhile, over in the original Z80-based line of the TRS-80 Model I/III/4, they had a "luggable" computer, the Model 4P, that would have blown the Osborne 1 away...if it had come out two years earlier. And, their first MS-DOS machine, the Tandy 2000, zigged when the market zagged: it was MS-DOS compatible but not PC compatible. It was also possibly the only computer from a major company that used the 80186 CPU. There are still some oddities about the Model 4 I remember fondly. The operating system for it was inspired by OS/360, I think, rather than whatever inspired CP/M and MS-DOS, so it had a different flavor -- "/" as the extension separator, JCL files instead of BAT files, and a very different way of handling devices. But it also had device redirection, which was kind of incredible for a machine of its time and capability. Going back and looking at what the last operating system shipped for it, LS-DOS 6.3, could do circa 1983 is pretty interesting -- and also speculating on what might have happened if Radio Shack had stuck with that path. (I can't find the specifics anymore, but there were a couple "SVC calls" -- the API that programs used to talk to the OS -- that were clearly meant to support a multitasking version of the OS that never came to be.) Anyway, other than Mr. Roach, I don't think they were a very forward-looking company in most respects. It's fun to speculate what might have happened -- one of mine was, what if Radio Shack had bought the Amiga and built a new OS for it around the 68K version of OS-9? They were better managed than Commodore, surely, right? Well, yeah, probably, but that's a pretty low bar to clear. They could probably have kept a Tandy Computers division going as a PC clone maker if they'd played their cards right, but they sold all that off by the mid-1990s, IIRC, and kept missing every boat from that point on. Ironic footnote: Tandy Leather, the craft company that birthed the once-giant Tandy Corporation, is actually still around.

Mountain_Skies 5y ago
Last time I was in the town I grew up in, I noticed one of the Radio Shack locations had been converted in a Tandy Leather. I remember as a kid being told that location had been a Tandy Leather store before it switched to Radio Shack. Fun to see it go full circle.