FYI. Everything is on sale, the liquidators have taken over all the stores. I went over and replenished my supply of solder, flux, small connectors, diodes, small bulbs, and a dual outlet USB charger.

Saved a ton of $$$$$$$$$$$$$$

A sad, sad day to see Radio Shack go.....just hatin' it.....

Not all stores are closing, the discount is only at stores that are closing.

I've been shopping for electronic circuit components at Fry's for a while, but RS definitely had more locations. I'll miss the Radio Shack convenience.

Last time I went to Radio Shack to pick up some custom adapter (can't remember what right now) the girl at the desk with long artistic painted nails, high heels, tight jeans and multi colored hair was...as I expected...no help at all. They got away from their roots, and tried to compete with everyone on everything (video games, phones, TV's, music, etc.) but they were not good any any of it....

Being an electronics tech, I'm regularly at Radioshack grabbing the odds and ends I inevitably forget to order from Mouser, Digikey, etc.
I know most of the clerks pretty well at my local store, and yesterday one of them told me that they'd just come out of chapter 11 and that that particular store I go to won't be closing.

But yeah, I think a lot of the locations are going to be gone, which sucks. There's no where else around here to grab electrical components if I need them. They definitely screwed themselves trying to be a mini-best buy. They should've just remained a specialty electronics store.

Radio Shack died a long time ago. 25 years ago you could go in and ask the clerk an electronics question and he knew the answer and often would lead you to the components needed for your electrical/electronics project. That ability died at least 20 years ago here locally when they started hiring clerks with no idea about electricity or electronics. What a shame. I remember going in there and getting these electronics handbooks with all kinds of projects to do and the guy would stop and explain what and how the circuit worked. No more! Go in and ask for a 1 amp 12 volt diode and you get a blank stare, then they point you to a cabinet with all of the electronic components and say, "it should be in there." They used to have several shelves with electrical/electronic components, now it is just one cabinet and it is poorly stocked.
Tom

Ugh. Where will I find my Forest M. Mims books now?

I've only been to rs about 6 times in the last 20 years. The have never had what I wanted or anyone there that knew what I was talking about. Last time I was looking for a potentiometer. Good riddance.

I was at oreillys a while back looking for a set of points on Sunday in an emergency for a customer. When I asked for points, the kid said, " oriellys points"? No. I said. Ignition points. He had no clue as to what that meant. Use to be that a parts man could tell you step by step how to r and r said part. Sad indeed.

Yes the car parts business is going the same way. Remember when you could go to a parts store that specializes in Vw and you could find parts for your 914. The clerks were knowledgeable. Now with the advent of the Internet you can order your parts on line. A few shops do know the cars, but you've seen some of the goofy listings for parts that just looking at are wrong.
Sadly the local parts stores don't have a clue for the most part.

Sounds like more opportunity for you Mark?

Just sayin........

They had at least slightly tried to get back to their roots with some Arduino stuff, and one or two other single-board things... don't know if they got into Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone, TI, or even any of the more sophisticated single-board computers. But like you guys have said, nobody in the store knew anything about them.

At least they had a few power components in their parts bins, but there was so much outside of the proper bins, that it was hard to navigate.

At least they had the thermistor I needed to fix one of my girl's ridiculously expensive curling irons at a whopping cost of $.75. The dude at the front at least knew they had that.

^this.... they did save me a few months ago, I needed a few capacitors to repair the digital timer/clock for my Viking oven, it was nice to pay less than $10 for the parts to fix something that would have been hundreds of dollars had I not been able to fix it myself.

Not sure about my local store, will have to drive by now.

Verizon Wireless will be taking over some of the locations.

Not Verizon. Sprint is taking some of the stores in prime locations.

That's what the clerk in the Seal Beach store said too: Sprint

Last time I was in there was to get some caps to fix a plasma TV. The clerk knew less about electronics than I do, which is not saying much. They didn't have the right sizes, so I ordered them from Mouser.

Every time I have been to RS in the last 15 years, I felt a little depressed because you could just "feel" that it was a dying business model. Electronics have become so cheap that most people consider them throw-away. Fewer and fewer people know how to fix things anymore. Hopefully, Youtube may turn that around a bit - that's how I learned how to fix the TV.

Hey Jim...I've got about 300-400 new capacitors of various ųf.
Leftovers from rs bulk-paks, I only use the 1ųf in my kits.
Yours if you can use them !
Let me know,
Marty

Used to be owned by Tandy leather. Tandy computer.
On the East Coast we also had Lafayette electronics on Long Island.
And then there was Heathkit which sold electronics kits.

When I started reading this thread I was going to point out the car parts sales person connection but that's been covered. I blame it on EOE laws. These companies hired everybody in an attempt to be "diverse" in their hiring practices. I am in NO way saying that women shouldn't sell car parts or anything else. Having worked as a mechanic for 20 years I knew SOME women who were very talented at auto repair, they were few but they are out there.

My point is, when they decided they needed to hire a "diverse" staff they knew they were hiring people with NO background experience that they could train to to use their computer systems that were "dumbed down" so high school girls etc. could sell their wares, but had no automotive experience. They also knew they could pay them minimum wage which drove away the people with actual experience who needed more than minimum wage to survive, and deserved it.

I would rather have them be paid more than minimum wage and deal with people who know a little about the things they are selling weather it be electronic parts,(Diodes,resistors etc), or auto parts, or....... you name it.

Unfortunately it's only going to get worse with time.

I went to O Reilly recently to buy front suspension parts for my nephews Dodge truck. Nothing like getting a snicker out of the girl behind the counter when I asked for ball joints.

Sorry for going further off topic but I won't miss Radio Shack for a second, given what they've become.

I remember going into Radio Shack with a dead capacitor I needed to replace in a short wave radio. The guy behind the counter looked at it and firmly said "We don't carry those kind of batteries". Gee they're going out of business, I wonder why...

Ansbacher

They were never that smart. We used to use our 2 meter ham radios in the 70's and call up the local radio shack and ask for 1 farad capacitors. The typical response was "let me see if we have one hanging on the wall". All the hams would be chuckling in the background. Interesting that none of the stores are closing in my neighborhood. Probably because the spoiled yuppies are too lazy to drive to Frys.

Back in the 70s a 1 Farad capacitor would be as big AS THE WALL.

Now you can get one the size of a 1 inch tall stack of quarters.

I was truly sad to see RadioShack go. I agree with all above it almost never had what I wanted anymore, but I had a lot of history with it. I was a proud owner of a TRS-80 with, WOW 32K total memory. I saw this article which made me realize all the things RS had been at the leading edge on.

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/09/16/for...tory-of-misses/

I learned how to read a schematic in the early 70's with there P-box kits. Which then lead to Heathkits and then a career in Telecommunications. Sad to see them go.

Then you might have one of these!

Yep, reminds me of the capacitor that I built for the Tesla Coil....24 sheets of plate window glass with aluminum foil sandwiched in between....weighed about 15 pounds....was connected in series with the spark gap prior to the primary coil which was 1/4 inch copper tubing wrapped in a helix around the base of the thing. All this driven by a neon sign transformer which put out 7500 volts itself. When it was fired up, no one on our block could hear their radios or see TV without major interference.....ahhh kids today....

I bought tons of stuff for 90~95% off at some local stores back in February. At the first store I went to, I walked out with over $1,000. worth of stuff for $25.

The register receipt was over 12 feet in length

You might be my long lost brother... Used to work for a medical electronics equipment OEM and the rf engineer and I built Tesla coils in our down time. We'd test our home-brew capacitors by charging them up and leaving them on the workbench in the lab. If we heard a scream later, we knew they were holding their charge.

Even CEO can't figure out how Radio Shack is still in business

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYWMyWq7Ajk


"Oh, that fellow at Radio Shack said I was mad, well who’s mad now?” – C.M. Burns

We used to charge up ignition condensers and leave them laying around for the next class in our high school auto shop class

I remember going in to RS as a kid in the 70s and getting a free battery every month with the battery club card. . . I also remember standing in front of one of those powerful Realistic stereo head units and wanting to hear my favorite rock tune on the headphones at near full power. . . . forgetting to turn off the speakers before cranking it up. . . In the local mall. . .

Now they're basically a large brick and mortar mall-kiosk for cell phone/ipod accessories and RC cars. . .

I remember when I was ~6-10 my dad would come home from RS with a "Do it yourself TV vacuum tube repair kit".
It was just a bunch of pairs of matching stickers.
You would open the back of your TV and put a sticker on each vacuum tube, pull it out and put the matching sticker on the base of that tube and repeat for all ~20 tubes.
Then you took your shoebox full of vac tubes back to RS and plugged each one into a vacuum tube tester.
Any that failed the test you would just look through the 1000 vac tubes they had in stock and bought a new one for each bad tube and moved the sticker over to the new one.
Then you went home and put all the tubes back in the TV.

I built the Guitar Amp, AM radio, metal detector, and electronic "keyboard" all before I was 10 years old...

And I wonder why I became an EE?

You must be 'vintage' if you remember testing tubes

I also remember them being called Allied Radio Shack. My older brothers got all the electronic supplier catalogs. I worked at a Lafayette in the early-mid 70's … right next door to a Radio Shack, across the street from Olson and down the street was Newark

Back then, almost every drug store and even some grocery markets had tube testers with the cabinet below stocking the more popular radio and TV tubes. I had some tube gear but transistors were also making their appearance when I got into electronics.

Click to view attachment

In the 5th grade I had a cigar box wrapped in aluminum foil with capacitor, a lantern battery, and spring switch.
Put a little "don't open" sign on the top and would place it on a desk before class.
Word spread quick amongst classmates and it was hilarious until my English teacher opened it.
English teachers have no sense of humor...

Mine was a disguised as a book titled "Famous Nudes". Loads of fun.

I only had there HF Ham Radio Gear. HX-11 and Sb101. I then replaced it with a Kenwood TS520.

Transistors? YOU must be vintage if you played with those...
Today everything is Integrated Circuits And VLSI.

Yep, I'm vintage … but still hep … even with SMT

Stopped in at my local RS. Business as usual. The sales guy said this store is staying open. I was hoping to get a deal on some 3d printer filament.

Do any of you old school electronics guys want to come by and dig into my 1962 Baldwin organ? I still haven't even opened it up.