[chaostic]

I heard this from a sales associate at my old radioshack (where I use to work). The parts/parts drawer will be phased out by January. This is atleast in Union county, NJ. He said they (Corp) might price down the parts for clearance, so stock up. Good thing for me though, is he suggested a good electonics store relativly near me with good, non-radioshacked logic prices. Greenbrook Electonics.

And on another note, selling someone a 19.88 freaking usb cable when they could get the same cable for .99 cents at a dollar store is despicable...

 

[Garbz]

No surprise there. Tandy the Australian equiverlent have been providing less and less of a variety of parts over the years. Nowadays unless i'm extremely desperate I don't even bother making the walk there. Despite fuel costs it's in to the car and off for a 15 min drive.

 

[fewtch]

RS is turning into another "me too" cell phone/iPod type store. Pitiful.

 

[jerb]

its not that their becoming another "me too" store, they already are, Since when do you go to RS to find th obscure part you need, they havent had the selection for years. RS is alreadys that "me too" Ipod/cellphone store, they're just now finishing the transition

 

[saturnine]

Well, looks like I no longer have a reason to go to Radioshack ever again. This will be good for the mom 'n pop parts stores though!

I dont see how they were losing any money by selling parts due to the insane markup on most of them.

 

[chaostic]

Those markups is probably why they lose so much business. The guy who told me about the other electonics store also told me the price for the same size pref board. 1 buck vs rs 4.26.

The only reason to go to radioshack now, imho, is the new vex robot kits, for people starting out in robotics. They seem pretty good. Ohh and the kronos tools. Life time warrenty I believe.

 

[bjackson]

Are there hobbiests anymore? I mean, we all are, but my cousin tells me back in the day Radioshack used to be pretty respectable. You could pick up decent quality components there. Never the top of the line, but certainly middle.

Nowadays the people in there are some of the most unknowlegable people in the world, no offense if you work there, etc, just from what I've seen.

Is there such a chain around or where else can you look for decent parts besides the internet these days?

 

[grandenigma1]

its sad... I walked into a RADIOshack looking for a SWR meter for my cdRADIO and they didn’t have one... in fact the guy working there had no idea what it was until I told him and then he made the genius comment "People still use those" then said something along the lines that new CBs come tuned already

... one of the many times they are proven to be completely worthless

 

[ericj]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bjackson Are there hobbiests anymore? I mean, we all are, but my cousin tells me back in the day Radioshack used to be pretty respectable. You could pick up decent quality components there. Never the top of the line, but certainly middle.

I think they used to be called "Radio Shack" with a straight face when amateur radio related DIY was more prevalant.

Fewer and fewer young people are getting into amateur radio, and those that do go straight for their no-code technicians license and pick up a used 2 meter HT rather than starting out with a lowly novice license and buying a heathkit CW transmitter in kit form.

And that is in part due to poorer and poorer science education in public schools, which decreases rates of electronic DIY in other fields as well.

Quote:

Nowadays the people in there are some of the most unknowlegable people in the world, no offense if you work there, etc, just from what I've seen.

That was the 2nd thought i had about this development.

It will annoy me that i will no longer have the option of going two blocks away if i just happen to need a 10 watt 1 ohm resistor at 8pm on a saturday. I'll have to wait until the real electronics store across town is open. In the summer, that will mean that i spend my lunch hour driving to the other end of the valley because they're not open saturdays during summer semester. They get most of their business from EE students.

But on the upside, it will mean that i will never have to interface with the smarmy bastards who work the floor at my neighborhood shack.Ever again.

They've got this one PFY who always hovers 5 feet away from me in what he thinks is my blind spot when i tell him that he can't possibly help me.

I've come within inches of walking out of the store empty-handed because of his annoying demeanor - and told him so - and at that point he backs off, but he doesn't LEARN that lesson.

And then they've got this shyster who always tries to sell me a Monster Cable product. Or something gold plated. And then i have to Control the Fist of Death, you know?

I mean I walk in there and he's trying to sell some unsuspecting rubes a $120 power strip with, what, like a few MOVs, a handfull of ceramic capacitors, and maybe, just maybe, a common mode choke - not that he could point them out to me in a picture - and he's telling them that AC power is AWFUL and that all the time when people buy these they end up having to re-calibrate their TV and adjust the EQ on their stereo and etc and etc because everything is working so much better!

I just want to take him out back and beat him to within an inch of his life with a hardback copy of horowitz & hill.

 

[blip]

That's too bad. While RS sucked, ericj is absolutely right, they had so many locations that you could almost always find one to pick up a bog standard part that you happened to be out of.

Of course they'd charge you 9x the price for it!

 

[dmunky]

The Radioshacks around here are starting to close down or are phasing the parts out. Most of the time if I need a part, they have to order it. It's a sad thing. Well there's always Digikey and Mouser.

 

[motherone]

As crappy as the rat-shack is, I did get my start in electronics from them. I had all the xx-in-1 electronics labs, the forrest mims books, etc. I still go there to pick up a part here or there if I'm in a rush (since there's two near where I live). It's sad to see the parts go, but it's hardly surprising.

I was poking through the parts bin on Saturday, looking for some standoffs (I ran out), and the sales clerk told me that the bins were going to be gone, very soon.

Now I need to find a place in Seattle to buy parts.. Fry's is *TERRIBLE*. They carry NTE parts, but they never restock anything, and the electronic parts section is always in shambles. I've almost complained about it tonight when I needed a 7805 regulator and stopped by there, and they didn't have any. But, I have a feeling I'd be wasting my breath.

 

[diredesire]

Quote:

Originally Posted by motherone As crappy as the rat-shack is, I did get my start in electronics from them. I had all the xx-in-1 electronics labs, the forrest mims books, etc. I still go there to pick up a part here or there if I'm in a rush (since there's two near where I live). It's sad to see the parts go, but it's hardly surprising. I was poking through the parts bin on Saturday, looking for some standoffs (I ran out), and the sales clerk told me that the bins were going to be gone, very soon. Now I need to find a place in Seattle to buy parts.. Fry's is *TERRIBLE*. They carry NTE parts, but they never restock anything, and the electronic parts section is always in shambles. I've almost complained about it tonight when I needed a 7805 regulator and stopped by there, and they didn't have any. But, I have a feeling I'd be wasting my breath.

damn. i was hoping this was a regional thing, but you're in seattle, too

 

[Illah]

Radio Shack isn't a 'me too' store - it's one of the largest dealers of cell phones and Dish Network plans in the country. Unless I'm mistaken, I think Radio Shack is THE largest cell phone dealer in the country, and I'm pretty sure they supply Dish most of their customers as well. Beyond that they have batteries, cordless phones, remotes, monster cable, etc. which make up the bulk of the business.

The electronics don't sell and take up valuable retail space. The staff doesn't know a thing about the electronics because it's not worthwhile for Radio Shack to invest money in training for those items. Ask them about thier cell phones (which they train quite a bit on methinks) and I bet they're a bit more helpful.

I think the reason DIY electronics is dying is because for $5 you can buy things at the grocery store that you could never DIY. You can DIY a microchip or a multilayer PCB, you can't really build your own MP3 player. Kids want computers and cell phones, not a dinky radio or metal detector hobby kit.

Sad times, but standards are rising and the level of expertise needed to produce at the level of those higher standards is WAY over what a kid can do with a soldering iron. Why bother when in a few years super cool gadgets like the iPod nano will be $25?

--Illah

 

[ericj]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Illah Radio Shack isn't a 'me too' store - it's one of the largest dealers of cell phones and Dish Network plans in the country. Unless I'm mistaken, I think Radio Shack is THE largest cell phone dealer in the country, and I'm pretty sure they supply Dish most of their customers as well. Beyond that they have batteries, cordless phones, remotes, monster cable, etc. which make up the bulk of the business.

So, next year, there will be nothing to differentiate RadioShack from the electronics department at Walmart.

Except that Walmart has video game consoles, games, and music.