I remember my first trek into a radio shack. One opened at the local mall, back when malls were a cool place to hang out. If you can imagine those overly-wide hallways seeming crowded most days...
I remember my first trek into a radio shack. One opened at the local mall, back when malls were a cool place to hang out. If you can imagine those overly-wide hallways seeming crowded most days and jammed on weekends - that did happen, once upon a time before the internet. That mall is a ghost town now, just a handful of stores.
That's where I got a look at my first computer. That was also when Atari and Tandy and Commodore were at war for the cheap computer space, many of these things didn't even have permanent storage yet and topped out at 48k of hard-soldered memory.
Radio shack back then was like the dungeon/basement version of an Apple store. Instead of spacious and bright, the place is cramped as hell, dark, and with vastly overstuffed shelves. Somewhere near the back of the store are a couple 'aisles' (I use that term loosely) of soldering equipment, every cable imaginable, and a ridiculous array of converters, adapters, and even replacement electrical components like capacitors. The place was just dripping with gadgets and tech toys. Fast forward a couple years and I remember the first IBM PS/1 systems hitting the scene, and 7th Guest playing on the PCs (which was one of the first games to use real video), while Beyond the Mind's Eye played on endless loop on the TVs.
I think the last time I was there I was after some very fine 40 gauge wire to use modding original xbox machines. They didn't have it. Amazon did.
even nearly five years on from when this was written (and with radioshack still clinging on to survival as a store/brand name), a eulogy for radioshack remains one of my favorite personal...
even nearly five years on from when this was written (and with radioshack still clinging on to survival as a store/brand name), a eulogy for radioshack remains one of my favorite personal narratives (and definitely the most relatable one) about the decay and near-total collapse of what at one point was one of the major brick-and-mortar technology stores. technology is often a fickle mistress, and i think this just underscores how radioshack never quite managed to get back ahead of the curve of technological progress after the internet exploded.
RadioShack was rarely as good as people remembered it. The reason why they are so we'll remembered was because they made many investments to make sure they could offer better products at the best...
RadioShack was rarely as good as people remembered it. The reason why they are so we'll remembered was because they made many investments to make sure they could offer better products at the best prices they could do, at one time going to the extreme of making their own computers from scratch. That RadioShack died some time around the late 80s or early 90s.
The reason why RadioShack the corporation died was the same as any big business; they failed to adapt to the market. Some time around the turn of the century technology changed from being tools for creating things to being tools to consume media. And RadioShack didn't seem to notice. It was basically the only store in the country where you could buy a video game console but not a video game.
For a very long time in my life, Radio Shack was the one place you could go to for obscure electronic accessories, cords, adapters - shit you just could NOT get anywhere else and that you could...
For a very long time in my life, Radio Shack was the one place you could go to for obscure electronic accessories, cords, adapters - shit you just could NOT get anywhere else and that you could almost be assured that you would find at Radio Shack. Then the commercial Internet boomed. It took about 10 years, but long about 2005, there was no reason to go to Radio Shack anymore.
I remember my first trek into a radio shack. One opened at the local mall, back when malls were a cool place to hang out. If you can imagine those overly-wide hallways seeming crowded most days and jammed on weekends - that did happen, once upon a time before the internet. That mall is a ghost town now, just a handful of stores.
That's where I got a look at my first computer. That was also when Atari and Tandy and Commodore were at war for the cheap computer space, many of these things didn't even have permanent storage yet and topped out at 48k of hard-soldered memory.
Radio shack back then was like the dungeon/basement version of an Apple store. Instead of spacious and bright, the place is cramped as hell, dark, and with vastly overstuffed shelves. Somewhere near the back of the store are a couple 'aisles' (I use that term loosely) of soldering equipment, every cable imaginable, and a ridiculous array of converters, adapters, and even replacement electrical components like capacitors. The place was just dripping with gadgets and tech toys. Fast forward a couple years and I remember the first IBM PS/1 systems hitting the scene, and 7th Guest playing on the PCs (which was one of the first games to use real video), while Beyond the Mind's Eye played on endless loop on the TVs.
I think the last time I was there I was after some very fine 40 gauge wire to use modding original xbox machines. They didn't have it. Amazon did.
even nearly five years on from when this was written (and with radioshack still clinging on to survival as a store/brand name), a eulogy for radioshack remains one of my favorite personal narratives (and definitely the most relatable one) about the decay and near-total collapse of what at one point was one of the major brick-and-mortar technology stores. technology is often a fickle mistress, and i think this just underscores how radioshack never quite managed to get back ahead of the curve of technological progress after the internet exploded.
RadioShack was rarely as good as people remembered it. The reason why they are so we'll remembered was because they made many investments to make sure they could offer better products at the best prices they could do, at one time going to the extreme of making their own computers from scratch. That RadioShack died some time around the late 80s or early 90s.
The reason why RadioShack the corporation died was the same as any big business; they failed to adapt to the market. Some time around the turn of the century technology changed from being tools for creating things to being tools to consume media. And RadioShack didn't seem to notice. It was basically the only store in the country where you could buy a video game console but not a video game.
For a very long time in my life, Radio Shack was the one place you could go to for obscure electronic accessories, cords, adapters - shit you just could NOT get anywhere else and that you could almost be assured that you would find at Radio Shack. Then the commercial Internet boomed. It took about 10 years, but long about 2005, there was no reason to go to Radio Shack anymore.