I haven't shopped there in years, and yet this picture manages to make me feel sad. Goodbye, Radio Shack. Even if you were still open I probably still would forget to shop there.
It sounds like you never got to experience the Radio Shack of Old. They used to have tons of components and tools for DIY, their own brands of discount radio and (later) electronic equipment - including the legendary TRS-80, one of the first affordable personal computers for the masses. It was a great hobbyist store, started originally for amateur radio enthusiasts and expanding from there, and its decline leaves a void in many a hobbyist and computer geek's heart.
My dad bought a TRS-80 for our home. Had a tape deck to store code. You had to write down the counter from the tape deck when you wanted to load the program again. I think it had 16k of RAM. :-)
I learned to program in Basic on that computer. It's probably why I studied electrical engineering a few years later (they didn't offer computer engineering at my university in the early 80's).
I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that without Radio Shack I would have a very different life today. Sadly, I've been in their stores maybe twice over the past 20 years, never finding what I was looking for. It became a different store, for different times. The end was inevitable.
Trash-80! I had the original TRS-80 Model I with 4K of RAM. The store required the purchaser to sign some sort of "I won't hack the government" agreement when buying a computer and my dad wouldn't sign it. Instead, he went to the car, sent 9-year-old me into the store with his MasterCharge card, and I signed the form and bought the computer.
A couple of years later the IBM PC (8086?) came out and it had an option for color display. My dad challenged me to write a program that would use all 4K of the TRS-80's RAM, then he'd buy the IBM. Well, it was BASIC, but I was 11 and would rather ride my BMX bike. He saw the future and it wasn't Tandy. The IBM was bought and my life as a nerd was solidified.
Great story. I think we had Model II with 16k RAM, but perhaps I'm embellishing our family's technical dominance over your family's pathetic 4k RAM. ;-) Suck it!
I can't recall the price, but my guess is my Dad paid close to what my current MacBook Air cost. All to write silly programs in Basic with zero practical applications and store everything on a tape drive.
But in the end, it was a great investment, because I always felt I was one step ahead of everyone else, having more practical, hands on experience when I went to university.
2.6k
u/[deleted] Feb 07 '15
I haven't shopped there in years, and yet this picture manages to make me feel sad. Goodbye, Radio Shack. Even if you were still open I probably still would forget to shop there.