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So last month I was in US for the first time and I was dying to walk into a RadioShack, the temple of cool things as I have been hearing about on obscure and po

So last month I was in US for the first time and I was dying to walk into a RadioShack, the temple of cool things as I have been hearing about on obscure and popular electronics hobby forums since I was 16. After checking out 6 stores in 4 cities, I was really disappointed. No cool stuff. All I could find was phone cases, cheap earphones and a few IC's(mildly interesting). To be honest, I didn't know what I was expecting but certainly not what I saw.

parasubvert 12y ago
That's what RadioShack was like up until the 90s - lots of cool stuff there, and an easy place to get electronic parts for hobbiests. There were Laser Discs on display in the 80s, TRS-80 CoCos (color computers), followed by Tandy PCs. I remember having free access to play with a TRS-80 hooked up to a thermal printer and dot matrix printer so you could figure out what you preferred - big and noisy or small and silent. I also remember my friend in high school picking up a special ordered US Robotics 14.4k HST modem with his Tandy PC in 1989 from Radio Shack - I was still on 1200 baud on my c64 and I lost a $5 bet that such a fast modem even existed. I was utterly blown away by the speed. At some point management decided it needed to be another CarPhoneWarehouse or RandomTechJunkShack
Maakuth 12y ago
I had similar experience, but I only visited a single store in downtown San Francisco (near Westfield mall). I thought my sample size was just too small, surely the whole chain couldn't be so lame. It's sad to hear that place wasn't an exception.