| ▲ | geerlingguy 6 hours ago |
| Many fond memories of Radio Shack. I bought some electronics kits, a mini DJ setup, and many, many components there as a kid. At one time, they had quite a catalog of Radio Shack branded items that were "good but not great"... but more importantly available a few miles away within practically any city. Almost every mall in St. Louis had one (usually near a hobby train store or an arcade). |
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| ▲ | EvanAnderson 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > ...but more importantly available a few miles away within practically any city. We're around the same age and likely have similar memories. I poured over Radio Shack catalogs and weekly ads when I was a kid. When my family went to the local mall I'd make a beeline for the Radio Shack and play w/ the various computers there until my parents pried me away. When I started doing PC tech work (in rural Western Ohio in the late 90s) it was always an option, no matter how far out in "the sticks" you were working, to drive to a Radio Shack for emergency parts. They might not have exactly what you needed, and you'd probably pay a hefty price, but you could get the job done. That ubiquity definitely left an impression on IT technicians of my generation. I was recently doing some work w/ a legacy system that called for some serial gender-bender/null modem cables. Not having any handy I had to improvise with some DE-9 to RJ-45 hoods and creative crimping to get what I needed. A cow-orker commented "We used to be able to just go to Radio Shack when we needed stuff like that in a hurry." |
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| ▲ | HeyLaughingBoy 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > DE-9 to RJ-45 Few things impress me more than someone using shell sizes correctly :-) | | | |
| ▲ | blooalien 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > When my family went to the local mall I'd make a beeline for the Radio Shack and play w/ the various computers there until my parents pried me away. Sounds like my childhood. Remember the Tandy TRS-80 CoCo? I do. :) | | |
| ▲ | EvanAnderson 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Absolutely! There would inevitably be a CoCo on display and that's the machine I'd play with. A common BASIC program I'd write on new-to-me computers was a FOR/NEXT loop to print all the characters in the character set. I remember discovering the color semigraphics characters in the CoCo character set and being weirded-out. I'd never seen anything like that on any of the other machines I'd ever used. I snared a CoCo2 a few years ago so I could re-live a few of those memories (and explore the machine with actual documentation). | | |
| ▲ | thijson 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | My favorite part of that era was subscribing to Rainbow magazine. Every month when it arrived, reading it cover to cover a few times. I didn't have access to any dialup in those days, so this was my only window to the whole ecosystem. I remember a box of 5.25 inch floppies were horrendously expensive at Radio Shack, maybe it was just our store though, I grew up in a small town in Canada. | |
| ▲ | blooalien 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Ah, the nostalgia. Those early days of home computers were sure some amazing times. Possibilities were infinite. Who'da thunk that we'd carry freakin' supercomputers (compared to those early machines) around in our pockets someday? Not me. LOL! | |
| ▲ | Mountain_Skies an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | For any CoCo folks not already aware: https://colorcomputerarchive.com There are several other good sources out there too but it's a good start for anyone looking to relive the fun old days. |
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| ▲ | ButlerianJihad 44 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | The 8-Bit Guy develops and distributes games for vintage computer platforms, and you can download Quarx for the Tandy CoCo 1, 2, 3: https://www.the8bitguy.com/25753/petscii-robot-shareware-ava... The complete version is also available there for purchase. |
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| ▲ | bluGill 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| They were always expensive, but you could go there on a Saturday afternoon and get something that will work - it might not be the right part, but it could be made to work. And expensive is relative - a $0.05 resister for $0.75 is very overpriced, and yet cheap. If you want to be in a hobby having that access close makes it a lot easier. |
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| ▲ | dfxm12 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | What's the cost of shipping on a single resistor from mouser or digi-key? Can you buy <15 from Amazon? Another way to think of it is that the ability to have no minimum quantity, not having to wait for shipping and maybe, if you're lucky, someone who can help you with info if you need it is baked into the price. With that in mind, maybe it isn't as overpriced as it seems. | | |
| ▲ | HeyLaughingBoy 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Amazon didn't exist at that time (or was probably still only selling books). Digi-Key still had a $25 minimum order. RS was pretty much the only game in town if you were a high schooler with a small allowance. OTOH, some items were surprisingly cheap. A couple years after college, I had a small business running out of a spare bedroom making temperature monitors and there was a shielded audio cable with connector that I used for the sensor. Radio Shack's price was about $1.50 each but all the "real" parts houses were at least 5x that. | |
| ▲ | bluGill 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I don't buy a single anything from those others. I'm going to buy enough to meet their $40 minimum order. Shipping isn't free, and takes 4-6 weeks (remember this is 1960-1990). All this means that I'm planning all my projects months ahead to make a large order that will keep me busy several months (starting 2 months from now) As an engineer my boss will approve $80 for a single resister after overnight shipping if that is what I need. The factory is buying the resisters a reel at a time (or similar large quantities) |
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| ▲ | swed420 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I flipped through my Forrest Mims Engineer's Mini-Notebooks so many times the pages almost fell out. Radioshack catalog archive in case anybody missed it: https://radioshackcatalogs.com/index.htm |
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| ▲ | euroderf 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | These were a great series. I wonder if there is anything comparable nowadays. |
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| ▲ | classichasclass 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| We spent hours at the local one. Picked up lots of parts and gear when I suppose they would have rather us bought their relabeled Realistic stuff. In junior high helped the 5th grade teacher with his network of CoCo 2s that used a CoCo 3 as a "file server" via a rotary dial to download courseware through the cassette interface. I wrote a fraction math trainer in BASIC for him to use with the students. He was still using it when I was in high school. |
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| ▲ | HeyLaughingBoy 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > network of CoCo 2s that used a CoCo 3 as a "file server" via a rotary dial to download courseware through the cassette interface Are you serious? That's fkn brilliant! |
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| ▲ | euroderf 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| I bought an Armatron "robot arm" but I haven't been able to find a guide to computer-controlling it - any tips are welcome ! |
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