I think I would have to see the receipt on that one.
Not too many Shacks that I am aware of that even have "Dusty Backrooms".[/QUOTE
Let me look for it...I will post it if I find it.
The older stores...decades old...certainly do.
FWIW...some sales at RS don't generate ...cough, cough..receipts in the way that regular purchases do.
An example..last year a manager at RS sold me a shortwave radio that had been found in the back room during the RS purge...no box, no docs, no charger, no warranty, no return...$10 out the door...and no receipt...and the radio works great.
Maybe RSJim can tell us how RS handles items that have been deleted from their system but remain in the corporate limbo..in my experience they are sold for whatever the manager and customer agrees on when they surface.
The Model 100 had specs which still aren't matched by any real product. It could run for 100 hours on a set of non-rechargeable commodity batteries. It had no moving parts such as fans or disk platters and no need for cooling. This meant you could drop a M100 while it was on or wrap it in a plastic bag to use it on the deck of a ship without damaging it.
It had a display which could be read without them even if you needed reading glasses and a full-travel keyboard on which a good typist could maintain a good rate. There really hasn't been a product that can take its place since in certain spaces, such as for example oceanographers who use them to record whale sightings.
Some time back I bought a couple of NEC PC8201A's, which were very similar but not quite compatible and therefore not workable with any of the moderm M100 hacks, with the thought of gutting and propellerizing one or both of them. I think I paid USD$75 for the nice one and USD$50 for the ugly one meant to be first prototype. That project got bogged down with the lack of support for any large memory model development system, and then before PropGCC came along my computer crashed taking with it all the early design work I'd done.
The large LCD display and full-travel portable keybaord are still products unavailable by any other channel than buying an old M100 or PC8201A.
I think I would have to see the receipt on that one.
Not too many Shacks that I am aware of that even have "Dusty Backrooms".[/QUOTE
Let me look for it...I will post it if I find it.
The older stores...decades old...certainly do.
FWIW...some sales at RS don't generate ...cough, cough..receipts in the way that regular purchases do.
An example..last year a manager at RS sold me a shortwave radio that had been found in the back room during the RS purge...no box, no docs, no charger, no warranty, no return...$10 out the door...and no receipt...and the radio works great.
Maybe RSJim can tell us how RS handles items that have been deleted from their system but remain in the corporate limbo..in my experience they are sold for whatever the manager and customer agrees on when they surface.
The POS system have a key that allows selling of items that are not on the inventory
Jim
For me, once, Radio Shack had the feel of that golden late-afternoon sun, relaxing into a place that held peace and excitement all at once. Capacitors and resistors on the wall, maybe a new IC I'd never seen before. A chance to explore something new, the promise of saving enough to buy that chip that I wanted so badly.
We've turned into a cold lot now, snidely commenting on how RS slipped down the wrong track and is apparently headed for the business graveyard.
But the memories it made.
The engineers it fostered. I still have a beautiful gold & black plastic-encased mica 0.1uF PC mount capacitor that I bought - probably in 1970 - and it reminds me of summer evenings imagining short wave receivers, tv audio receivers, and all sorts of other projects, some of which I actually built, and some that remained fantasy forever, but the memories of RS "back in the day" are sweet. I'll mourn its passing.
For me, once, Radio Shack had the feel of that golden late-afternoon sun, relaxing into a place that held peace and excitement all at once. Capacitors and resistors on the wall, maybe a new IC I'd never seen before. A chance to explore something new, the promise of saving enough to buy that chip that I wanted so badly.
We've turned into a cold lot now, snidely commenting on how RS slipped down the wrong track and is apparently headed for the business graveyard.
But the memories it made.
The engineers it fostered. I still have a beautiful gold & black plastic-encased mica 0.1uF PC mount capacitor that I bought - probably in 1970 - and it reminds me of summer evenings imagining short wave receivers, tv audio receivers, and all sorts of other projects, some of which I actually built, and some that remained fantasy forever, but the memories of RS "back in the day" are sweet. I'll mourn its passing.
I had those battery club cards too.
Dave
You bring up an interesting point...the number of people influenced by their early exposure to RS that later took technical paths in employment.
Maybe its a chicken and egg thing...did RS turn its back on the technical customer base or did the technical customers forget who was responsible for helping them earn their success?
As we all know...the public is a fickle bunch with the atitude of "What have you done for me today"...shopping for the cheapest price with no loyalty as shown by the wholesale purchase of non-American products.
...did RS turn its back on the technical customer base or did the technical customers forget who was responsible for helping them earn their success?
Seems to me that the technical customer base that you speak of, from the generations of the hey day of RS, grew up, built the internet and went on line.
That is why there are more opportunities and avenues of approach for budding geeks and electronics hobbyists today that there has ever been.
As I mentioned before, today we have the Maker movement, a billion tutorials on the net, projects presented on YouTube. Suppliers of all kinds of geeky gadgets and components like AdaFruit, SparkFun, Parallax a bunch of others. We have plentiful component supplies from Digikey, Mouser, wherever. Parallax, the Arduino and Raspeberry Pi and other "communities" are a testament to how big this all is.
The technical customers did not "forget" RS. They are an entirely new young generation, what would they have to forget? They are growing up in a different world.
...no loyalty as shown by the wholesale purchase of non-American products.
I'm as sad as anyone that such a lot of manufacturing vaporized in America and Europe and moved to Asia.
However I think this whole idea of "must buy American" or "must by British" etc is silly.
Firstly paying more than you need to to buy a home manufactured product is not actually productive. When you pay two dollars for a widget instead of one that is throwing away one dollar in inefficiency that could be put to better use. It's actually detrimental to the overall economy.
Secondly, limiting ourselves to buying "own country" products is pretty much impossible. We would not have much of anything if we tried.
There is a bright side. The Raspberry Pi shows that products can be mass produced in good quality and at competitive prices at home. The Raspberry Pi boards are made in Wales. Who would have thought that was ever possible a couple of years back?!
Only just this morning I was reading how wages in China have been doubling every couple of years and now Chinese companies are even outsourcing production to the States as a result.
Only just this morning I was reading how wages in China have been doubling every couple of years and now Chinese companies are even outsourcing production to the States as a result.
I have actually been waiting for this, I've said for years "sit tight and wait, it'll even out". As soon as any low-cost country starts to dominate production it's just a matter of time until that country also gets richer, and their costs increase. Remember 'Made in Japan'? It meant "cheap" at one time. Then it became expensive and you had 'Made in Taiwan' (or what came after Japan - I don't recall if there was a 'Made in South Korea' after Japan). And then that became expensive, and it was 'Made in China', but several of those are now 'Made in Malaysia' or 'Made in Indonesia'. Just wait it out, the market situtation isn't static.
Seems to me that the technical customer base that you speak of, from the generations of the hey day of RS, grew up, built the internet and went on line.
That is why there are more opportunities and avenues of approach for budding geeks and electronics hobbyists today that there has ever been.
As I mentioned before, today we have the Maker movement, a billion tutorials on the net, projects presented on YouTube. Suppliers of all kinds of geeky gadgets and components like AdaFruit, SparkFun, Parallax a bunch of others. We have plentiful component supplies from Digikey, Mouser, wherever. Parallax, the Arduino and Raspeberry Pi and other "communities" are a testament to how big this all is.
The technical customers did not "forget" RS. They are an entirely new young generation, what would they have to forget? They are growing up in a different world.
I'm as sad as anyone that such a lot of manufacturing vaporized in America and Europe and moved to Asia.
However I think this whole idea of "must buy American" or "must by British" etc is silly.
Firstly paying more than you need to to buy a home manufactured product is not actually productive. When you pay two dollars for a widget instead of one that is throwing away one dollar in inefficiency that could be put to better use. It's actually detrimental to the overall economy.
Secondly, limiting ourselves to buying "own country" products is pretty much impossible. We would not have much of anything if we tried.
There is a bright side. The Raspberry Pi shows that products can be mass produced in good quality and at competitive prices at home. The Raspberry Pi boards are made in Wales. Who would have thought that was ever possible a couple of years back?!
Only just this morning I was reading how wages in China have been doubling every couple of years and now Chinese companies are even outsourcing production to the States as a result.
I too do not support blindly paying "to support the Flag".
But I do see the need for a local source for any resource...and that redunancy does cost money to have in place.
I have no problem with paying more to support it.
I do have a BIG problem when I am paying excessively for it.
In the past I have been in the local Walmart at 3:00AM buying a laptop, a video camera and other items because we NEEDED IT RIGHT NOW!
The fact that they were there, they were open and what we needed was in immediate stock was not lost upon me.
Anyone who doesn't realize that you need local sources hasn't had a 3:00AM experience yet.
And no Internet source would have replaced this need.
The real question is how much will the redunancy cost.
As Americans race to the bottom for the lowest price, they will get what they want...and more.
I have actually been waiting for this, I've said for years "sit tight and wait, it'll even out". As soon as any low-cost country starts to dominate production it's just a matter of time until that country also gets richer, and their costs increase. Remember 'Made in Japan'? It meant "cheap" at one time. Then it became expensive and you had 'Made in Taiwan' (or what came after Japan - I don't recall if there was a 'Made in South Korea' after Japan). And then that became expensive, and it was 'Made in China', but several of those are now 'Made in Malaysia' or 'Made in Indonesia'. Just wait it out, the market situtation isn't static.
-Tor
The market is always dynamic.
In our American past, we were the "China" of Great Britian...
I do see what you are saying. But you have switched the debate from manufacturing to stores.
Yes I have that 3:00AM thing quite a lot. Here we have a giant PC/Electronics/white goods store that does most of it's business over the net. It's a huge success because it's got stock in the country that can be delivered very quickly, the prices are good and it operates in the local language. Their huge store in the capital has a little "kiosk" shop on the side that is open 24 hours, brilliant, if you live in the city you can get everything from a USB stick to a wall sized Samsung TV at any time you feel the need.
However, this does not help when I need a resistor or a MOSFET. Nobody can make money with 24 hour component stores. Except possibly in Shenzhen.
Now, that thing about paying over the odds for local manufacturing. There are those who argue that it is not efficient or necessarily even good for you. They will argue that it's like going out into the yard and throwing a rock though your window so that you can call up the local glazier to fix it. Thus ensuring that your local glaziers have work. The glaziers may love this idea but it is ultimately wasteful of your money and overall wealth of the neighbourhood. It does not inspire the glaziers to investigate something more useful to do. Just creating "busy work" is more destructive than creative.
Too_Many_Tools,
In our American past, we were the "China" of Great Britian...
What? In the past China and India and places were the "China" of the British Empire. America was where a bunch of Europeans went to seek their fortune while ignoring the homelands copyright and patent laws (Well, all right, a bit like China in that last point:))
I do see what you are saying. But you have switched the debate from manufacturing to stores.
Yes I have that 3:00AM thing quite a lot. Here we have a giant PC/Electronics/white goods store that does most of it's business over the net. It's a huge success because it's got stock in the country that can be delivered very quickly, the prices are good and it operates in the local language. Their huge store in the capital has a little "kiosk" shop on the side that is open 24 hours, brilliant, if you live in the city you can get everything from a USB stick to a wall sized Samsung TV at any time you feel the need.
However, this does not help when I need a resistor or a MOSFET. Nobody can make money with 24 hour component stores. Except possibly in Shenzhen.
Now, that thing about paying over the odds for local manufacturing. There are those who argue that it is not efficient or necessarily even good for you. They will argue that it's like going out into the yard and throwing a rock though your window so that you can call up the local glazier to fix it. Thus ensuring that your local glaziers have work. The glaziers may love this idea but it is ultimately wasteful of your money and overall wealth of the neighbourhood. It does not inspire the glaziers to investigate something more useful to do. Just creating "busy work" is more destructive than creative.
Too_Many_Tools,
What? In the past China and India and places were the "China" of the British Empire. America was where a bunch of Europeans went to seek their fortune while ignoring the homelands copyright and patent laws (Well, all right, a bit like China in that last point:))
Money can be made anywhere, anytime there is demand.
RS could easily place a vending machine outside of their stores for after hours access...and those components sold would do wonders for their brand.
I know I would access it after hours...I once was digging through my own supplies at 3:00AM to furnish a component for a company design review that resulted in millions of dollars...and one of the results is that my "brand" was greatly enhanced.
And as I have mentioned...those 3:00AM trips to Walmart were necessary RIGHT NOW...significant money was at stake...and it was not because of poor planning...sometimes life just happens and how you respond and with what determines success or failure. It really is the "For a lack of a nail a kingdom is lost..." theme.
I am not advocating a "make work" effort...but one does not expect to import a glazier from China and wait 6 month to get the window fixed. In the US, we do a terrible job of retraining labor to meet changing technology trends.
In the past, America's textile industy (cheap labor) exported to Great Britian and the rest of Europe...just like China does to the world today...and the cheap production of cotton was a major factor for our Civil War.
Comments
It had a display which could be read without them even if you needed reading glasses and a full-travel keyboard on which a good typist could maintain a good rate. There really hasn't been a product that can take its place since in certain spaces, such as for example oceanographers who use them to record whale sightings.
Some time back I bought a couple of NEC PC8201A's, which were very similar but not quite compatible and therefore not workable with any of the moderm M100 hacks, with the thought of gutting and propellerizing one or both of them. I think I paid USD$75 for the nice one and USD$50 for the ugly one meant to be first prototype. That project got bogged down with the lack of support for any large memory model development system, and then before PropGCC came along my computer crashed taking with it all the early design work I'd done.
The large LCD display and full-travel portable keybaord are still products unavailable by any other channel than buying an old M100 or PC8201A.
It would be great if we could make a modern day Model 100 or Cambridge_Z88 type machine with a nice low power ARM SoC and an eInk display.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/america-worst-companies-152240176.html
Could be worse, I suppose. RS was ranked above the others in the list. They can say they aren't even in the top 10.
Makes me wonder if they reported the 11 worst instead of the usual 10 just so they could include Radio Shack.
Now see - that's what I like to think of.
For me, once, Radio Shack had the feel of that golden late-afternoon sun, relaxing into a place that held peace and excitement all at once. Capacitors and resistors on the wall, maybe a new IC I'd never seen before. A chance to explore something new, the promise of saving enough to buy that chip that I wanted so badly.
We've turned into a cold lot now, snidely commenting on how RS slipped down the wrong track and is apparently headed for the business graveyard.
But the memories it made.
The engineers it fostered. I still have a beautiful gold & black plastic-encased mica 0.1uF PC mount capacitor that I bought - probably in 1970 - and it reminds me of summer evenings imagining short wave receivers, tv audio receivers, and all sorts of other projects, some of which I actually built, and some that remained fantasy forever, but the memories of RS "back in the day" are sweet. I'll mourn its passing.
I had those battery club cards too.
Dave
Despite RadioShack's efforts to remain competitive in the ever-evolving electronics industry, the retailer is nearing irrelevancy.
I guess that's a real word: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/irrelevancy
You bring up an interesting point...the number of people influenced by their early exposure to RS that later took technical paths in employment.
Maybe its a chicken and egg thing...did RS turn its back on the technical customer base or did the technical customers forget who was responsible for helping them earn their success?
As we all know...the public is a fickle bunch with the atitude of "What have you done for me today"...shopping for the cheapest price with no loyalty as shown by the wholesale purchase of non-American products.
That is why there are more opportunities and avenues of approach for budding geeks and electronics hobbyists today that there has ever been.
As I mentioned before, today we have the Maker movement, a billion tutorials on the net, projects presented on YouTube. Suppliers of all kinds of geeky gadgets and components like AdaFruit, SparkFun, Parallax a bunch of others. We have plentiful component supplies from Digikey, Mouser, wherever. Parallax, the Arduino and Raspeberry Pi and other "communities" are a testament to how big this all is.
The technical customers did not "forget" RS. They are an entirely new young generation, what would they have to forget? They are growing up in a different world. I'm as sad as anyone that such a lot of manufacturing vaporized in America and Europe and moved to Asia.
However I think this whole idea of "must buy American" or "must by British" etc is silly.
Firstly paying more than you need to to buy a home manufactured product is not actually productive. When you pay two dollars for a widget instead of one that is throwing away one dollar in inefficiency that could be put to better use. It's actually detrimental to the overall economy.
Secondly, limiting ourselves to buying "own country" products is pretty much impossible. We would not have much of anything if we tried.
There is a bright side. The Raspberry Pi shows that products can be mass produced in good quality and at competitive prices at home. The Raspberry Pi boards are made in Wales. Who would have thought that was ever possible a couple of years back?!
Only just this morning I was reading how wages in China have been doubling every couple of years and now Chinese companies are even outsourcing production to the States as a result.
Can you share that link? Would love to hear more.
I have actually been waiting for this, I've said for years "sit tight and wait, it'll even out". As soon as any low-cost country starts to dominate production it's just a matter of time until that country also gets richer, and their costs increase. Remember 'Made in Japan'? It meant "cheap" at one time. Then it became expensive and you had 'Made in Taiwan' (or what came after Japan - I don't recall if there was a 'Made in South Korea' after Japan). And then that became expensive, and it was 'Made in China', but several of those are now 'Made in Malaysia' or 'Made in Indonesia'. Just wait it out, the market situtation isn't static.
-Tor
I too do not support blindly paying "to support the Flag".
But I do see the need for a local source for any resource...and that redunancy does cost money to have in place.
I have no problem with paying more to support it.
I do have a BIG problem when I am paying excessively for it.
In the past I have been in the local Walmart at 3:00AM buying a laptop, a video camera and other items because we NEEDED IT RIGHT NOW!
The fact that they were there, they were open and what we needed was in immediate stock was not lost upon me.
Anyone who doesn't realize that you need local sources hasn't had a 3:00AM experience yet.
And no Internet source would have replaced this need.
The real question is how much will the redunancy cost.
As Americans race to the bottom for the lowest price, they will get what they want...and more.
The market is always dynamic.
In our American past, we were the "China" of Great Britian...
I do see what you are saying. But you have switched the debate from manufacturing to stores.
Yes I have that 3:00AM thing quite a lot. Here we have a giant PC/Electronics/white goods store that does most of it's business over the net. It's a huge success because it's got stock in the country that can be delivered very quickly, the prices are good and it operates in the local language. Their huge store in the capital has a little "kiosk" shop on the side that is open 24 hours, brilliant, if you live in the city you can get everything from a USB stick to a wall sized Samsung TV at any time you feel the need.
However, this does not help when I need a resistor or a MOSFET. Nobody can make money with 24 hour component stores. Except possibly in Shenzhen.
Now, that thing about paying over the odds for local manufacturing. There are those who argue that it is not efficient or necessarily even good for you. They will argue that it's like going out into the yard and throwing a rock though your window so that you can call up the local glazier to fix it. Thus ensuring that your local glaziers have work. The glaziers may love this idea but it is ultimately wasteful of your money and overall wealth of the neighbourhood. It does not inspire the glaziers to investigate something more useful to do. Just creating "busy work" is more destructive than creative.
Too_Many_Tools, What? In the past China and India and places were the "China" of the British Empire. America was where a bunch of Europeans went to seek their fortune while ignoring the homelands copyright and patent laws (Well, all right, a bit like China in that last point:))
Money can be made anywhere, anytime there is demand.
RS could easily place a vending machine outside of their stores for after hours access...and those components sold would do wonders for their brand.
I know I would access it after hours...I once was digging through my own supplies at 3:00AM to furnish a component for a company design review that resulted in millions of dollars...and one of the results is that my "brand" was greatly enhanced.
And as I have mentioned...those 3:00AM trips to Walmart were necessary RIGHT NOW...significant money was at stake...and it was not because of poor planning...sometimes life just happens and how you respond and with what determines success or failure. It really is the "For a lack of a nail a kingdom is lost..." theme.
I am not advocating a "make work" effort...but one does not expect to import a glazier from China and wait 6 month to get the window fixed. In the US, we do a terrible job of retraining labor to meet changing technology trends.
In the past, America's textile industy (cheap labor) exported to Great Britian and the rest of Europe...just like China does to the world today...and the cheap production of cotton was a major factor for our Civil War.