20 Nov
2001
20 Nov
'01
12:58 a.m.
I have seen several posts on other fora bemoaning the fact that our
beloved Radio Shack is rapidly phasing out it's sales of carded
components, resistors, caps, diodes, etc.
I imagine this to be the case... and another blow to Enginerds and
parts-level hobbyists not lucky enough to be near a Fry's or other
still-functioning small-quantity parts outlet.
Experimenters: Time to stock up!
Cheers
John
20 Nov
20 Nov
2:57 a.m.
I guess I'm lucky, living in Dallas. We have two Fry's, Altex
Electronics, Allied Electronics, Mouser Electronics, Tanner's (a small
family owned component and surplus store, one of the best stocks of
components I've ever seen) and BG Micro, all witin a 30 minute driving
range. i've never thought about having to mail order even the most
basic parts until my friend moved to a small town in Oklahoma, just
south of the Kansas border. He tells me that unless it can be found at
Rat Shack or Wal-Mart, he SOL..
James
http://home.texoma.net/~jrice
John Lawson wrote:
I have seen several posts on other fora bemoaning the fact that our
beloved Radio Shack is rapidly phasing out it's sales of carded
components, resistors, caps, diodes, etc.
I imagine this to be the case... and another blow to Enginerds and
parts-level hobbyists not lucky enough to be near a Fry's or other
still-functioning small-quantity parts outlet.
Experimenters: Time to stock up!
Cheers
John
.
3:10 a.m.
Sorry for the typos. I broke a couple of fingers this week. Hard to
type with fingers taped together
James L. Rice wrote:
I guess I'm lucky, living in Dallas. We have two
Fry's, Altex
Electronics, Allied Electronics, Mouser Electronics, Tanner's (a small
family owned component and surplus store, one of the best stocks of
components I've ever seen) and BG Micro, all witin a 30 minute driving
range. i've never thought about having to mail order even the most
basic parts until my friend moved to a small town in Oklahoma, just
south of the Kansas border. He tells me that unless it can be found
at Rat Shack or Wal-Mart, he SOL..
James
http://home.texoma.net/~jrice
6:07 a.m.
Re: Radio Shack abandons components
Did TechAmerica (I think that was a RatShack
business) make it? That would be an OK way to
transition that business and enhance it at the same
time. Has everyone seen the catalog? More kit
builds than any I've seen in the past 20 years.
Sorry for the typos. I broke a couple of fingers this
week.
Hard to type with fingers taped together (James L. Rice)
I hope this wasn't from wedging heavy things into 19" racks!*
Best wishes in any case.
John A.
Or from paired Alnico voice coil magnets.
Or from belts for 8" drives.
Or from ......
8:30 a.m.
TechAmerica is now RadioShack.com
Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: "John Allain" <allain(a)panix.com>
To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2001 10:07 AM
Subject: Re: Radio Shack abandons components
Re: Radio
Shack abandons components
Did TechAmerica (I think that was a RatShack
business) make it? That would be an OK way to
transition that business and enhance it at the same
time. Has everyone seen the catalog? More kit
builds than any I've seen in the past 20 years.
Sorry for the typos. I broke a couple of fingers
this week.
Hard to type with fingers taped together (James L. Rice)
I hope this wasn't from wedging heavy things into 19" racks!*
Best wishes in any case.
John A.
Or from paired Alnico voice coil magnets.
Or from belts for 8" drives.
Or from ......
4:13 a.m.
On Tue, 20 Nov 2001, James L. Rice wrote:
my friend moved to a small town in Oklahoma,
Unless he just really values the "don't use a turn signal 'cuz everyone
knows where I'm goin'" small-town society, please send your friend my
condolences. I've been there but managed to escape with (hopefully) more
of my life ahead than behind. :-)
On the other hand, the cost of living in small-town Oklahoma is one of the
cheapest in the USA. For a concrete example, in my old hometown, a nice
3750 ft^2 house with a huge property sold for US$70K. This means less
money spent living, more money to spend on classiccmping, and greater ease
in finding room to put all of it.
--
Jeffrey S. Sharp
jss(a)subatomix.com
4:52 a.m.
"Jeffrey S. Sharp" wrote:
On Tue, 20 Nov 2001, James L. Rice wrote:
My wife an I have gotten pretty good at catalog shopping, so mail order
works well for us. I'm finding that most of the local stores (even the
malls) are selling lower quality items. Though I will say that Kmart has
made a vast improvement since Martha Stewart got involved. The only thing
we can't do mail order is food. I live in NJ and find that the area's
restaurants stay open until ~midnight and we have a varied menu to
choose from. I understand that Brooklyn has a more varied menu too.
On the other note of piece meal components, I've found that with a lot of
imagination one can take advantage of today's uControllers to build some
of the coolest stuff. Processors cost ~$6, 3 pcbs (~2"x3") $50, add the
components and a single hand built board can cost <$100. PLD's, FPGA, etc.
etc.. Man do we live in interesting times (both good and bad).
--
Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry(a)home.net
http://members.home.net/ncherry (Text only)
http://linuxha.sourceforge.net/ (SourceForge)
http://hcs.sourceforge.net/ (HCS II)
my friend moved to a small town in Oklahoma,
Unless he just really values the "don't use a turn signal 'cuz everyone
knows where I'm goin'" small-town society, please send your friend my
condolences. I've been there but managed to escape with (hopefully) more
of my life ahead than behind. :-)
On the other hand, the cost of living in small-town Oklahoma is one of the
cheapest in the USA. For a concrete example, in my old hometown, a nice
3750 ft^2 house with a huge property sold for US$70K. This means less
money spent living, more money to spend on classiccmping, and greater ease
in finding room to put all of it. 
6:06 a.m.
Neil Cherry wrote:
On the other note of piece meal components, I've
found that with a lot of
imagination one can take advantage of today's uControllers to build some
of the coolest stuff. Processors cost ~$6, 3 pcbs (~2"x3") $50, add the
components and a single hand built board can cost <$100. PLD's, FPGA, etc.
etc.. Man do we live in interesting times (both good and bad).
But one problem is that almost all real I/O is handled by hard to find
semi-custiom chips - PC motherboards come to mind. Many of the older
I/O
devices are too slow to be of value. Ben Franchuk.
--
Live "Pre-historic Cpu's" -- and you thought they were extinct.
www.jetnet.ab.ca/users/bfranchuk/index.html
7:44 a.m.
Ben Franchuk
Neil Cherry wrote:
On the other note of piece meal components,
I've found that with a lot of
imagination one can take advantage of today's uControllers to build some
of the coolest stuff. Processors cost ~$6, 3 pcbs (~2"x3") $50, add the
components and a single hand built board can cost <$100. PLD's, FPGA, etc.
etc.. Man do we live in interesting times (both good and bad).
But one problem is that almost all real I/O is handled
by hard to
find semi-custiom chips - PC motherboards come to mind. Many of the
older I/O devices are too slow to be of value. Ben Franchuk.
This is, of course, too true. We can emulate them with the FPGA's but
you have to understand how they work. I've been doing some creative
work with alternate parts but I haven't had time to sit down with the
really powerful chips. So little time so many projects.
--
Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry(a)home.net
http://members.home.net/ncherry (Text only)
http://linuxha.sourceforge.net/ (SourceForge)
http://hcs.sourceforge.net/ (HCS II)
8:59 a.m.
If you want to translate a schematic from the old TTL SSI/MSI devices to a
programmable device in a dense package, it's much more likely to happen easily
in a CPLD than an FPGA, though people keep telling me that FPGA's provide more
logic at lower cost. I agree that it's more difficult to make it happen in
FPGA, but for a circuit the size of a Multibus-1 or (somewhat smaller) S-100
board, a moderately priced CPLD should get the job done pretty well, though they
used enough one-shots to complicate the job considerably.
With device pin-pitch at 20-25 mils, (actually the metric equivalent) it's
unlikely one will hand wire anything with them. Therefore one's limited to
using PCB mounted parts. Since disposal of PCB-related materials is so costly
these days, it's unlikely one will want to do that at home. What this leaves is
a need for an adapter for some fairly standard-packaged-CPLD and/or FPGA, and
then simply work within the confines of what one can have made up by way of an
adapter from that package to something that one can hand-wire or wire-wrap.
Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: <dmc!njc(a)opal.tseinc.com>
To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2001 11:44 AM
Subject: Re: Radio Shack abandons components
Ben Franchuk
Neil Cherry wrote:
On the other note of piece meal components,
I've found that with a lot of
imagination one can take advantage of today's uControllers to build some
of the coolest stuff. Processors cost ~$6, 3 pcbs (~2"x3") $50, add the
components and a single hand built board can cost <$100. PLD's, FPGA, etc.
etc.. Man do we live in interesting times (both good and bad).
But one problem is that almost all real I/O is
handled by hard to
find semi-custiom chips - PC motherboards come to mind. Many of the
older I/O devices are too slow to be of value. Ben Franchuk.
This is, of course, too true. We can emulate them with the FPGA's but
you have to understand how they work. I've been doing some creative
work with alternate parts but I haven't had time to sit down with the
really powerful chips. So little time so many projects.
--
Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry(a)home.net
http://members.home.net/ncherry (Text only)
http://linuxha.sourceforge.net/ (SourceForge)
http://hcs.sourceforge.net/ (HCS II)
9:48 a.m.
Richard Erlacher
If you want to translate a schematic from the old TTL SSI/MSI devices to a
programmable device in a dense package, it's much more likely to happen easily
in a CPLD than an FPGA, though people keep telling me that FPGA's provide more
logic at lower cost. I agree that it's more difficult to make it happen in
FPGA, but for a circuit the size of a Multibus-1 or (somewhat smaller) S-100
board, a moderately priced CPLD should get the job done pretty well, though they
used enough one-shots to complicate the job considerably.
With device pin-pitch at 20-25 mils, (actually the metric equivalent) it's
unlikely one will hand wire anything with them. Therefore one's limited to
using PCB mounted parts. Since disposal of PCB-related materials is so costly
these days, it's unlikely one will want to do that at home. What this leaves is
a need for an adapter for some fairly standard-packaged-CPLD and/or FPGA, and
then simply work within the confines of what one can have made up by way of an
adapter from that package to something that one can hand-wire or wire-wrap.
Actually I'm about to attempt to learn hwo to do just that, hand
solder qfp chips to a carrier board with DIP header endings. I have an
eZ80 that I want to brain transplant into a spare HCS II (uses a
Z180). I've checked out Don Lancasters page on how to build your own
smt hot air iron and may attempt it this winter. I'll start by working
on low cost parts and work up from there.
--
Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry(a)home.net
http://members.home.net/ncherry (Text only)
http://linuxha.sourceforge.net/ (SourceForge)
http://hcs.sourceforge.net/ (HCS II)
10:35 a.m.
On Tue, 20 Nov 2001 dmc!njc(a)opal.tseinc.com wrote:
Richard Erlacher
Actually 25 or 20 mil QFP stuff is easy to do with just a
soldering iron, the secret is to make surface tension do the work. This
requires large amounts of rosin flux... I just solder the whole mess (all
the leads shorted together) and then using adequate flux, and tilting the
board, drain the excess solder off by dragging the iron along the pins.
Done it hundreds of times - works like a charm, but sometimes you have to
use solder wick to unshort the last 2 pins on each side.
Hot air works too but you have to be careful not to burn the PCB
(if using a standard hand held hot air gun).
I've used a standard hot air gun to solder 388 and 516 pin BGA
stuff too. Not that hard but you have to make a jig to hold the BGA part
in place (with a little (.007 maybe) slop). I make the jig from 4 pieces
of scrap circuit board material tack soldered to the proto board. Surface
tension will pull the part into place when all the solder melts. You can
tell when the solder melts because the BGA chip will sink about 10 mils
(which is one of the reasons that the jig cannot be too tight) I wouldn't
solder a very valuble BGA part by hand this way but I have a 70% or so
success rate which is ok for protos. When soldering BGA parts on a proto,
solder the BGA part first, so that you can sight down all the rows of
solder balls to make sure that you dont have a short...
If you want to translate a schematic from the old TTL SSI/MSI devices to a
programmable device in a dense package, it's much more likely to happen easily
in a CPLD than an FPGA, though people keep telling me that FPGA's provide more
logic at lower cost. I agree that it's more difficult to make it happen in
FPGA, but for a circuit the size of a Multibus-1 or (somewhat smaller) S-100
board, a moderately priced CPLD should get the job done pretty well, though they
used enough one-shots to complicate the job considerably.
With device pin-pitch at 20-25 mils, (actually the metric equivalent) it's
unlikely one will hand wire anything with them. Therefore one's limited to
using PCB mounted parts. Since disposal of PCB-related materials is so costly
these days, it's unlikely one will want to do that at home. What this leaves is
a need for an adapter for some fairly standard-packaged-CPLD and/or FPGA, and
then simply work within the confines of what one can have made up by way of an
adapter from that package to something that one can hand-wire or wire-wrap.
Actually I'm about to attempt to learn hwo to do just that, hand
solder qfp chips to a carrier board with DIP header endings. I have an
eZ80 that I want to brain transplant into a spare HCS II (uses a
Z180). I've checked out Don Lancasters page on how to build your own
smt hot air iron and may attempt it this winter. I'll start by working
on low cost parts and work up from there.
--
Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry(a)home.net
http://members.home.net/ncherry (Text only)
http://linuxha.sourceforge.net/ (SourceForge)
http://hcs.sourceforge.net/ (HCS II)
Peter Wallace
6:45 a.m.
Rumor has it that Neil Cherry may have mentioned these words:
"Jeffrey S. Sharp" wrote:
>
> On Tue, 20 Nov 2001, James L. Rice wrote:
>
> > my friend moved to a small town in Oklahoma,
>
> Unless he just really values the "don't use a turn signal 'cuz
everyone
> knows where I'm goin'" small-town society, please send your friend my
> condolences. I've been there but managed to escape with (hopefully) more
> of my life ahead than behind. :-)
Yes, but knowing that you 1) have only a few small-town teen hoodlums <sp?>
and you usually know what they're going to do before they do is a very nice
feeling sometimes...
Digi-key always seemed to expensive for my tastes -- at least for
everything that I need, Mouser seems a lot less expensive & I can attest
that they have *very* helpful and quite clueful staff, but when you need
that *weird* part, JDR & Jameco seem to keep a lot of older stuff in stock...
> On the other hand, the cost of living in
small-town Oklahoma is one of the
> cheapest in the USA. For a concrete example, in my old hometown, a nice
> 3750 ft^2 house with a huge property sold for US$70K. This means less
> money spent living, more money to spend on classiccmping, and greater ease
> in finding room to put all of it.
Damn! I could actually *afford* that - but the only thing that comes close
to big enough for me, the wife, 3 chilluns (& of course the computers) is a
handyman's [wet]dream...
My wife an I have gotten pretty good at catalog
shopping, so mail order
works well for us. I'm finding that most of the local stores (even the
malls) are selling lower quality items. Though I will say that Kmart has
made a vast improvement since Martha Stewart got involved. The only thing
we can't do mail order is food. I live in NJ and find that the area's
restaurants stay open until ~midnight and we have a varied menu to
choose from. I understand that Brooklyn has a more varied menu too.
No! Nooooooo! Not the food thing again!!!
On the other note of piece meal components, I've
found that with a lot of
imagination one can take advantage of today's uControllers to build some
of the coolest stuff. Processors cost ~$6, 3 pcbs (~2"x3") $50, add the
components and a single hand built board can cost <$100. PLD's, FPGA, etc.
etc.. Man do we live in interesting times (both good and bad).
Yes we do.
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
8:06 a.m.
Housing cost do vary a lot. My old house, now my ex-wifes house was
about 20 years old, was 2700ft^2 on a large lot about 60 miles from
Dallas, and cost $95k. My current house is 20 minutes from downtown
Dallas on a lake shore, 3300ft^2 on a tiny lot and cost me $242k to
build year before last. But if I was to move farther away I would burn
up the savings on commuting costs.
On the other hand, the cost of living in small-town
Oklahoma is one
of the
cheapest in the USA. For a concrete example, in
my old hometown, a
nice
3750 ft^2 house with a huge property sold for
US$70K. This means less
money spent living, more money to spend on classiccmping, and
greater ease
> in finding room to put all of it. 
4:32 a.m.
I live just north of Fort Worth, and the big Radio Shack "Outlet Store".
They have a lot of discontinued things, and a lot of components. I assume
they'll always have them.
Owen
on 11/20/01 5:58 AM, John Lawson at jpl15(a)panix.com wrote:
I have seen several posts on other fora bemoaning the fact that our
beloved Radio Shack is rapidly phasing out it's sales of carded
components, resistors, caps, diodes, etc.
I imagine this to be the case... and another blow to Enginerds and
parts-level hobbyists not lucky enough to be near a Fry's or other
still-functioning small-quantity parts outlet.
Experimenters: Time to stock up!
Cheers
John
9:19 a.m.
I live just north of Fort Worth, and the big Radio
Shack "Outlet Store".
They have a lot of discontinued things, and a lot of components. I assume
they'll always have them.
I've noticed that even the 'bargain bin' area that used to be
tucked back in one corner of most stores seems to be gone as well.
Used to be able to get some cool older discontinued stuff from that
section, including Model 2000 stuff. Unfortunately I also passed on
a portable disk drive in the same area at one point.
Jeff
--
Home of the TRS-80 Model 2000 FAQ File
http://www.cchaven.com
http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lakes/6757
4:46 a.m.
It's not a bad idea to check RadioShack.com, which is a parts-oriented outlet
that, unfortunately, didn't interact with the RadioShack stores. They have lots
of parts, connectors that fit together, and lots of other stuff that the corner
Radio Shack store never thought to carry. Moreover, they have people who answer
the phone and a web-accessible parts inventory that uses industry standard part
numbers rather than Radio Shack secret code. It happens that their store is
here in Denver, which is advantageous for shipping, I guess, but, having visited
the place myself, I have to say it's a shame they also retail computers and
other electronics, which means that market trends could push them out of the
parts biz after a while too. Their company is, after all, run by marketing and
the bean counters.
Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: "John Lawson" <jpl15(a)panix.com>
To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2001 4:58 AM
Subject: Radio Shack abandons components
I have seen several posts on other fora bemoaning the fact that our
beloved Radio Shack is rapidly phasing out it's sales of carded
components, resistors, caps, diodes, etc.
I imagine this to be the case... and another blow to Enginerds and
parts-level hobbyists not lucky enough to be near a Fry's or other
still-functioning small-quantity parts outlet.
Experimenters: Time to stock up!
Cheers
John
5:11 a.m.
I've seen this coming for a while.
At 06:58 AM 11/20/01 -0500, John wrote:
I have seen several posts on other fora bemoaning
the fact that our
beloved Radio Shack is rapidly phasing out it's sales of carded
components, resistors, caps, diodes, etc.
I imagine this to be the case... and another blow to Enginerds and
parts-level hobbyists not lucky enough to be near a Fry's or other
still-functioning small-quantity parts outlet.
Experimenters: Time to stock up!
If you live in the US (sorry John) then Digikey is pretty good at getting
many of the parts you need. Between them, Mouser, and a few surplus places
I can find everything I need for any given project. However, it is true
that "hobbyist" electronics is quickly going to become a lot more challenging.
--Chuck
5:46 a.m.
This is only another sign of the trend. Whereas, some 20+ years back, it was no
problem to go out and buy IC's and passives, which could easily be reworked,
today's ultra dense and surface mounted technology is so difficult to work by
hand that board-level repair is very difficult with tools likely to be in the
hobbyist's kit. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what that's
done to the market.
Consequently, there's little sense in having a worldwide components distribution
network, as Radio Shack has had for >25 years. Today's electronic gadgets have
a hundred+ components per square inch of PCB, and most of them are difficult to
remove/replace without damaging them or the board. For me, it's enough of a
problem if I just drop one part. Resistors, capcitors, and inductors are the
size of a pinhead nowadays, and you need not only a microscope to read the
designators on them, but a vast library to interpret the markings. The retail
space is too valuable to use for something that no longer serves the public
interest, or the corporate coffers. What's more, the economy benefits more from
replacement of a PCB than from its repair, though it costs you, the end-user,
more, and generates more rubbish in the landfill.
Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chuck McManis" <cmcmanis(a)mcmanis.com>
To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2001 9:11 AM
Subject: Re: Radio Shack abandons components
I've seen this coming for a while.
At 06:58 AM 11/20/01 -0500, John wrote:
I have seen several posts on other fora
bemoaning the fact that our
beloved Radio Shack is rapidly phasing out it's sales of carded
components, resistors, caps, diodes, etc.
I imagine this to be the case... and another blow to Enginerds and
parts-level hobbyists not lucky enough to be near a Fry's or other
still-functioning small-quantity parts outlet.
Experimenters: Time to stock up!
If you live in the US (sorry John) then Digikey is pretty good at getting
many of the parts you need. Between them, Mouser, and a few surplus places
I can find everything I need for any given project. However, it is true
that "hobbyist" electronics is quickly going to become a lot more challenging.
--Chuck
6:27 a.m.
And don't forget the fact that people today seem (in my opinion) to
experiment and tinker with electronics less and less.
I moonlighted at a Radio Shack for two years, and during that time I sold
maybe three or four electronics kits to people. I was the biggest buyer in
the district of component parts (capacitors, resistors, ICs, and such),
while the only real component sales we had were fuses and lamps.
Signs of the times. We had a Fry's open up near me (Houston, TX), and
walking in there was a real tinkerer's dream. Everything from appliances
and telescopes to computers and electronic components (and a decent
selection of REAL test equipment - not just DVMs!). I'm surprised that they
actually sell electronic components.
I could get lost in that store and not come out until Chapter
11....... : )
- Matt
At 09:46 AM 11/20/2001 -0700, you wrote:
This is only another sign of the trend. Whereas, some
20+ years back, it
was no
problem to go out and buy IC's and passives, which could easily be reworked,
today's ultra dense and surface mounted technology is so difficult to work by
hand that board-level repair is very difficult with tools likely to be in the
hobbyist's kit. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what that's
done to the market.
Consequently, there's little sense in having a worldwide components
distribution
network, as Radio Shack has had for >25 years. Today's electronic gadgets
have
a hundred+ components per square inch of PCB, and most of them are
difficult to
remove/replace without damaging them or the board. For me, it's enough of a
problem if I just drop one part. Resistors, capcitors, and inductors are the
size of a pinhead nowadays, and you need not only a microscope to read the
designators on them, but a vast library to interpret the markings. The retail
space is too valuable to use for something that no longer serves the public
interest, or the corporate coffers. What's more, the economy benefits
more from
replacement of a PCB than from its repair, though it costs you, the end-user,
more, and generates more rubbish in the landfill.
Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chuck McManis" <cmcmanis(a)mcmanis.com>
To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2001 9:11 AM
Subject: Re: Radio Shack abandons components
Matthew Sell
Programmer
On Time Support, Inc.
www.ontimesupport.com
(281) 296-6066
Join the Metrology Software discussion group METLIST!
http://www.ontimesupport.com/cgi-bin/mojo/mojo.cgi
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer" - Adolf Hitler
Many thanks for this tagline to a fellow RGVAC'er...
I've seen this coming for a while.
At 06:58 AM 11/20/01 -0500, John wrote:
challenging.
>
> --Chuck
>
>
> I have seen several posts on other fora
bemoaning the fact that our
beloved Radio Shack is rapidly phasing out it's sales of carded
components, resistors, caps, diodes, etc.
I imagine this to be the case... and another blow to Enginerds and
parts-level hobbyists not lucky enough to be near a Fry's or other
still-functioning small-quantity parts outlet.
Experimenters: Time to stock up!
If you live in the US (sorry John) then Digikey is pretty good at getting
many of the parts you need. Between them, Mouser, and a few surplus places
I can find everything I need for any given project. However, it is true
that "hobbyist" electronics is quickly going to become a lot more 
21 Nov
21 Nov
3:52 a.m.
New subject: Cringely on the origin of the IBM PC and Open Source
Read the comments by Jack Sams, formerly of IBM, about half-way down.
Fascinating history.
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20011122.html
--Mike
Michael Nadeau
Editorial Services
603-893-2379
20 Nov
20 Nov
5:13 a.m.
John Lawson wrote:
I have seen several posts on other fora bemoaning the fact that our
beloved Radio Shack is rapidly phasing out it's sales of carded
components, resistors, caps, diodes, etc.
I imagine this to be the case... and another blow to Enginerds and
parts-level hobbyists not lucky enough to be near a Fry's or other
still-functioning small-quantity parts outlet.
Experimenters: Time to stock up!
Cheers
John
Well the trend is these days not to build anything from parts,
especially in ham radio. Even at hamfests, the interesting goodies are
disappearing, because there is no demand.
The big retailers now make more money selling stereos, satellite TV
systems and cell phone service than parats.
Back to Jim-pack and mail order.
Gary Hildebrand
5:41 a.m.
Radio Shack has been slowly diminishing the individual parts and goin for
the glamour sales of consumer electronics mostly anymore. Won't be long and
the days of RS/Lafayette/Olson being in the nearby neighborhood strip malls
for those that want to "do it themselves" will be totally gone.
-> -----Original Message-----
-> From: owner-classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org
-> [mailto:owner-classiccmp@classiccmp.org]On Behalf Of John Lawson
-> Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2001 5:59 AM
-> To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org
-> Subject: Radio Shack abandons components
->
->
->
->
-> I have seen several posts on other fora bemoaning the fact that our
-> beloved Radio Shack is rapidly phasing out it's sales of carded
-> components, resistors, caps, diodes, etc.
->
-> I imagine this to be the case... and another blow to Enginerds and
-> parts-level hobbyists not lucky enough to be near a Fry's or other
-> still-functioning small-quantity parts outlet.
->
->
-> Experimenters: Time to stock up!
->
->
->
-> Cheers
->
-> John
->
->
8281
days inactive
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22 comments
17 participants
participants (17)
-
allain＠panix.com -
bfranchuk＠jetnet.ab.ca -
cmcmanis＠mcmanis.com -
dmc!njc＠opal.tseinc.com -
edick＠idcomm.com -
ghldbrd＠ccp.com -
jhellige＠earthlink.net -
jpl15＠panix.com -
jrice＠texoma.net -
jss＠subatomix.com -
menadeau＠mediaone.net -
msell＠ontimesupport.com -
ncherry＠home.com -
pcw＠mesanet.com -
rhblakeman＠kih.net -
univac2＠earthlink.net -
zmerch＠30below.com