Maplin have really gone away from the hobbyist
electronic market towards
PC-clone modules, cinsumer electronics, etc. Gone are the days when you
could go to the enarest Maplin in your lunchbreak to get the bits needed
for the afternoon's hardware hacking. In fact these days, even if it's in
the catalogue, there's a good chance it won't be in the shop. Most
interesting items are 'order only'
Sounds exactly like Rat Shack (aka Radio Shack) in the US. They still stock
It's like Tandy/Radio Shack _used_ to be over here, sure. About 20 years
ago there was Tanfy, who sold Lo-Fi, portable TVs, etc and a few
components. And there was Maplin who sold components, electronic kits [1]
and little else. And the shops had at least the common things, like 10k
resistors, 74LS00s, DB25 connectors, etc in stock.
[1] Some of those kits were specific to Maplin, and were quite
complicated. I remember building the Nicam TV tuner/decoder, for example.
A lot of R's and C's and I had to align the IF strip when I'd built it.
In the old days I bought quite a it of stuff from Maplin. Now just about
the only thing I buy from Maplins is propan-2-ol, amasingly they keep
spray cans of that in stock at the shops. I got to RS or Farnell for
components. The only real prolem is cable. Maplin used to do a good
rangem, and sell it by the metre (well, ribbon cable in 30cm multiples).
TS/Farnell generally only sell large (50m, 100m) reels. No prolem if I'm
buying single-core wire, I use 100m in not-too-long, and it's not
expensive. It is a prolem if I have to pay \pounds 300.00 for a reel of
multi-core cale when all I need is 1m, and I can't see ever needing the
rest...
-tony
