Oh Radio Shack - What happened? Share your RS stories here.

[shortrackskater]

With the exception of one store, the two Radio Shacks in my area are closed and closing. I'm old enough to have shopped there when it truely was THE place to go for actual electronics, before it morphed into more of a small appliance/ household electronics and cell phone place.
I remember a lot of their store brands: Archer, Realistic, Duophone...I know there's more.
Anyone remember more names?
Here's my pile of goodies I bought today. Most werehalf or 60 percent off. There were only two of those routers left so I got one. I may check back there in a week or so and scavenge some of the parts and electronic trays when they go to 70 % off.

[LINDAM]

I use to use Radio Shack when I had to have it Now, But the real Electronics place Was Lafayette Electronics. I'm an old guy So I remember them. Radio Shack is almost done cause there are so many people on the Bay that everything so cheap.

[Amechanic]

Our Radio Shack stores closed here about 2 months ago. I went in a bought some soldering iron tips and a whole new set at 60% off. I went to go back a couple days later to go thru the parts drawer, and they had already closed the doors and were pulling the inventory to take to another store about 25 miles away. Sad to see them close, but they didn't keep up with the times, got to busy selling cell phones.

[SolidSilver]

I bought my first personal computer from Tandy Radio Shack in the late '70's: a TRS80 ("Trash 80") running CP/M on cassette tapes.
A few years later I replaced it with a newer TRS80 that used DISK drives!!! (8" floppies...)
'Way back then, the Tandy companies served a broad range of home DIY "crafts", including ham radio and all those silly geeks
who wanted a computer in their home, for cryin' out loud.

Somewhere along the way, sometime in the late 1990's, they lost their way, and began to lose their customers. With lines of alarm systems, telephones, and radio-control models you could buy anywhere else cheaper and better, they tried to battle the likes of Bridgestone in the mall arena. Like many others I'm sure, the last time I shopped at a Radio Shack, not one of the three employees knew what the F&*% a capacitor was.

[shortrackskater]

...Somewhere along the way, sometime in the late 1990's, they lost their way, and began to lose their customers. With lines of alarm systems, telephones, and radio-control models you could buy anywhere else cheaper and better, they tried to battle the likes of Bridgestone in the mall arena. Like many others I'm sure, the last time I shopped at a Radio Shack, not one of the three employees knew what the F&*% a capacitor was.

Funny, when I was working on the Status slot machine,  I needed a 7805 voltage regulator. It was night and the only real electronics store was closed. Believe it or not, Radio Shack had one in their tiny stock of actual electronics. The guy working there had no clue what it was of course but he happily sold it to me. It had probably been sitting there for years.

[RILaw]

Ours closed a few months ago as well, I ended up with almost $6k in crap for less than $120 total.  The last location I went to had a deal, everything you could fit into a large shopping bag for $20.  I walked out with two dbl bagged bags piled over the tops.  Had a 34' receipt with $4200 total(parts draw stuff sure adds up).  After that I had to stop myself from going to other stores as I just have too much crap.  I do have a HUGE battery inventory now, along with fuses and other electronic parts I use for arcade /pinball/slot repair.  Got a few badass bottle openers too, originally $29 each, $1.20.

[jay]

Here in Canada, Radio Shack sold out to "The Ontario Teachers Pension Fund" and run by Bell Canada. Bell is also heavily financed by the same pension fund.

They did this conversion about 4 years ago and have been renamed to "The Source" and as a store they are truly horrible. In all fairness Radio Shack had lost its way and became horrible before they were ever converted. The Source just started off as horrible and has not improved.

I used to work at Radio Shack and we sold copper boards, and etching fluid. We had a tube tester, and a cabinet full of tubes. Resistors, Caps, ICs, etc. Loved it all.
Now you are lucky to find a spool of generic speaker wire and sell monster brand wire for $49.00 for a 16' spool. We used to have a huge roll of the 18' gage that we sold off at 0.16/ft. I bought a package of 8 of those round lithium batteries that are commonly clipped to laptop mother boards for  $2.89 at Ikea. The source wants $3.49 for a single battery. We used to have every watch battery there was and cross references for thousands more, remember the 24v N cell ? We sold audio adapters and could probably go from any plug to any other plug even if we had to put 10 together. TRS-80, I got into these at the 5.25 floppy era, used to cut a notch on the other side of the floppy so we could use it double sided. Never could afford one so I bought a color computer (coco) which used cassette tapes to store programs. There was a floppy adapter but it was more than the cost of the computer. 32K who would ever need more than 32K until the 64k model came out.

We had Minimus-11 Speakers - small speaker big sound. We had X10 remote modules before it was ever known as X10.

I sure miss the "old" place.......

[subsailor]

I remember the shack back in the early 70's when I was in high school and learning about electronics. You could get all sorts of components and cool gizmo stuff. Remember the tube tester that you could bring in your radio tubes to check if they were good and under the tester was a cabinet full of new tubes. They had a closeout of revell saturn 5 model rockets that were like 30 inches tall. Then in the 80's came the trash 80's. Boy does that bring back memories!!!

[shortrackskater]

Thanks for the good stories everyone! Keep 'em coming. 

[Krusher]

RS isn't dead. I talked to a manager at a local store picking up a lithium battery for a machine.
He said there is a company which bought RS. He said they are going to be supporting a heck of a lot more with DIY ETC. The new owners I guess read all the surveys etc that got turned in about a year ago.

There is hope it sounds like it may be turning into pre cellphone radio shack.
Wooohoo..
 
Grounding wrist strap and a battery 10 bucks.
Got what I needed and machine purring.. Woohoo..

[RILaw]

District Mgr told me Sprint bought all remaining stores, wonder which it is?  Hope its what you heard....

[Krusher]

I hope so too. Without knowing someone at the top I guess we can hope.
Supposedly the by me was going to be upping their parts stock.
(I did notice parts that were gone before had returned)..

Here's to hope
Old style rs back..
We need as many fellow geeks to support em.. Cause as of now
If they do what we hope it has to run a profit In the end.

District Mgr told me Sprint bought all remaining stores, wonder which it is?  Hope its what you heard....

[JDKMunch]

Radio Shack was my first job - worked there from the age of 15 - 25


We got paid minimum wage OR 10% commission on our sales whatever was higher. 
7000 stores then



http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/blog/techflash/2015/07/radioshack-the-name-s-the-same-but-its-owner-has.html