On a related note, if you love(d) RadioShack, be sure to check out Akihabara ('Electric Town') in Tokyo if you ever get a chance. http://www.kirainet.com/english/radio-center/. I have never seen so many electronic components on sale in one place. It was even possible to find "vintage" ICs.
The Lost Tribes of RadioShack
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Re: The Lost Tribes of RadioShack
#12At least my neck of the woods (New England, well-educated town), electronics tinkering is alive and well, mostly in the form of robotics competitions. There's a _lot_ of robotics clubs around here, starting with Mindstorms and working up to a handful of high-school students who design circuit boards and send their mechanical part designs out to 3D prototyping houses.
Notice, also, the popularity of Make magazine, the Arduino, and the open source hardware movement. (Not to mention the self-replicating 3D printer geeks.)
RadioShack, I think, is largely a victim of Digikey and other online component retailers. It just doesn't make sense to devote much sales space to resistors and bread boards in a modern mall, when you can get any imaginable part shipped to you in a couple of days.
Re: The Lost Tribes of RadioShack
#13On a related note, if you love(d) RadioShack, be sure to check out Akihabara ('Electric Town') in Tokyo if you ever get a chance. http://www.kirainet.com/english/radio-center/ . I have never seen so many electronic components on sale in one place. It was even possible to find "vintage" ICs.
Reminds me a bit of the Yongsan electronics market in Seoul. I've never been in a building before with a hundred different stores selling nothing but PC power supply fans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yongsan_Electronics_Market
I've never been to Akihabara, but I've heard that the experience is similar.
Re: The Lost Tribes of RadioShack
#14Digikey is the new Radio Shack. Nicer selection, but you can't just drive there since they're online.
Around here, that would be Frys; they carry most popular items from the NTE catalog. I might hate their inventory control methods, but they're the only brick and mortar location I can go to get components anymore, aside from basics that Radio Shacks still carry.
There's also American Science and Surplus for motors and solenoids, but their inventory of used stuff is always a crapshoot.
Re: The Lost Tribes of RadioShack
#15Forget Radio Shack, anyone remember Heathkit? http://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/30/business/plug-is-pulled-on... http://img807.imageshack.us/img807/5103/h100cat851.jpg I remember puzzling over everything in the store as a kid, it was fascinating and I couldn't afford anything but the free catalogs. I knew those super-dooper expensive computers were the future. (Eventually built a Heathkit AM radio).
I so wanted a Heathkit HERO when I was a kid. I biked regularly to Radio Shack just to stare at it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HERO_%28robot%29
No robot for me, but I did end up getting a Tandy 1000SX. I used that all through high school and college.
Re: The Lost Tribes of RadioShack
#16I applaud what this guy is doing and I hope he can get new business from it, but for most RadioShacks it's a lost cause.
I was last in a RadioShack a week ago to find a spool of wire-wrap wire. The salesperson didn't even know what I meant, so he just let me look around until I found it. It's kinda sad because I'm old enough to remember being a kid drooling over their huge component selection and going in every day to look at the short wave receiver I wanted for Christmas and being able to have an intelligent conversation about electronics.
But when I bought components yesterday, the $40 or so I spent at BG Micro (http://www.bgmicro.com support these guys, they're nice :-) would have been close to $200 at Radio Shack even back when they carried most of that stuff.
Don't mourn Radio Shack -- experimentation, kits, and hardware hacking is bigger than ever. It's just moved online along with everything else.