How many of you remember when Radio Shack was exciting? Now if you grew up in a big city where there were other options, there might have never been a time when Radio Shack was exciting, but it was for me. My second and third computers were from Radio Shack - a TRS-80 and a Tandy-1000, the first being a Coleco Adam. Radio Shack was one of the early mass-market retailers of computers, at prices that regular people could afford, and they also carried pretty much everything someone might want in the way of electronics. They weren't the only ones, by any means, but they were perhaps the first to have a store within easy driving distance of nearly everyone in the country. I can remember wondering how they could fit so much stuff into such a small retail space but, of course, they could order pretty much anything they didn't have in stock. I think most of them are closed now. The last one I visited was in Augusta, Maine about five years ago. It was a sad little store that didn't carry anything that I could imagine anyone needing badly enough to drive to a store for it. It's closed now.
I used to go there quite a bit. I recall their computers. Radio Shack also had their own operating system: Tandy Radio Shack Disc Operating System, or TRS-DOS (pronounced TrisDos.) I believe there was no hard drive in the early ones, just the O/S on a cassette tape. My first multi meter (when I was in my teens) was a build-it-yourself from them (Archer Kit.) I recall when I blew out the power diode and took it into work to replace it. A tech had one of the first digital meters (Beckman), and we were testing my repair job. We put my crap analog Archer Kit against his Beckman and measured resistors, comparing our results. Just for grins I was BSing readings 3 points to the right of the decimal place. I was actually pretty darn close to the Beckman. We had a Radio Shack here in the town I moved to in 2010. I bought my TV antenna mast there, as well as a bunch of other miscellaneous parts. I think they tried to hang on as an independent after the RS bankruptcy, but could not make it. There was another store of that era called Lafayette. I still have the first stereo I ever owned: a Lafayette LR-1200. The "LR" stands for "Lafayette Receiver." 12 screaming watts, baby...RMS!!! Bought it when I was making $1.80/hr. I have it set up in my garage. Coming up on 50 years old and still cranking out tunes. I can't believe I own a radio that's 50 years old and does not have tubes. wow.
I remember Radio Shack, used to really enjoy shopping there. they had almost any kind of tech gadget that a person needed, and the prices were usually good, too. I bought my first shortwave receiver radio from there, and enjoyed listening to some of the military and aviation conversations that were on frequencies that I could pick up with that radio. I think that my CB radios came from there, too, at least some of them did. I really liked having a CB radio, but I traveled a lot back then, and almost needed one on the road. It always seemed odd to me that Radio Shack was owned by Tandy, which was a leather marketing company. Tandy made little kits that you could get to put together and lace up a nice billfold, pair of moccasins, and many other leather items. When I was taking leather working in high school, I ordered a bridle and matching breast collar for my horse, as well as a set of saddle bags, and tooled them all to match. I drew a picture of my horse’s head on the saddle bags, and put her name across the front of the breast collar. Eventually, it seems like the Tandy leather part just sort of faded out, but by then they had Radio Shack stores all over the country. We had one here in Huntsville for a while, but I think it went out of business when the little mall where it was located closed down.
Radio Shack (RS) was the place to go for stereo equipment back in the 70's where I lived. My first stereo system came from RS in Raleigh, NC, in 1972. The store brand was Realistic. I even remember how much it cost: $169. That would be $1060 with inflation. There is still one Radio Shack in a small town (pop. 3000) near here last I checked. Internet says it's still there but they don't always keep up to date.
I recall the Realistic brand. Funny coincidence, Nancy, I bought my Lafayette receiver in 1972. I don't recall what I paid for it...the receipt is not with the manual. I recall when R.S. was The Tandy Corp, and later called Tandy/Radio Shack. I still have a Tandy leather craft kit. I guess it was a hobby shop, or perhaps a manufacturer of hobby stuff. This thread made me go read up on the current status of Radio Shack, since I thought it only had an online presence now. Radio Shack filed for operating bankruptcy in March of 2017. From Wiki: Their website shows "over 450 stores."
I used to have a CB in my pickup truck, but for the life of me I could never understand what anyone was saying. It wasn't the lingo, it was understanding the words. My hearing is weird that way, kinda like trying to understand the works to rock music. I got rid of it. And I just commented that I still have a Tandy leather craft set in my closet. I recall the Tandy/Radio Shack brand. I did not know that Tandy was a leather craft company.
Amazingly, there is still a Tandy Leathercraft ! They have a website that you can order from, and some stores , too. When I put in my zip code, there are about 5-6 stores in this area. None are close to me, the closest would be either Montgomery or Nashville; but still, Tandy exists and still has all of these awesome leather-crafting kits. https://tandyleather.com/blogs/projects
@John Brunner R.M.S. Root Mean Square. Early on, my concept of it was clouded, but I understood nonetheless that my meter indicating 120 volts was actually connected across a peak voltage sine wave of higher value. This was all from Freshman high school Electric Theory. At 19, I started DeVry Technical Institute, seeking an Associate in Applied Science, Electronics Technology. Then, the math became clearer, and since Power (Watts) had begun to be very important, I learned that the Sine Wave we all know the shape of represented Power, that being expressed by the AREA of the sine curve above or below the zero line. See below: Most all of our work in practical applied electricity is done using RMS values. Our measuring instruments read out RMS volts or amperes. However, we can "see" the sign wave using an oscilloscope. Power represents heating effect. So, simply stated, 120 volts RMS produces the same amount of power as it's peak value, which is about 170 volts, top and bottom extremes of the sine curve. These considerations are made (peak values) for Alternating Current to arrive at numbers equating power-wise to express a DIRECT CURRENT voltage value producing an equivalent amount of power. For the math wizards: Yes, the bottom portion of the sine curve represents negative voltage as opposed to the top, positive part of the curve. This might imply NEGATIVE POWER which might cancel everything out..... not the case. Frank
Yeah...the RMS value times the square root of 2, (or 1.414) gives you the "peak" value of the sine wave. Thus, your 120-volt light bulb actually "sees" 170 volts 120 times per second from the positive and negative "swings" of the sine wave! (Faye Fox knows this too.) Hal
You guys are taking me back to my Intro to Tubes & Transistors days. It might be interesting to some folks here for you to explain the difference between I.P.P. and RMS in a real-world application, such as shopping for a "5 HP" vacuum.
Yeh, but back in the days of the early IBM PCs, we referred to the original Macs as "toys," but their users were actually getting work done while the rest of use were learning DOS, creating config.sys files and swearing at issues with autoexec.bat