deft touch
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Aug 3, 2006
- Messages
- 206
where can i buy 5 1/4w 1k resistors online without paying $5 for shipping. I don't want to go to radioshack and theres no other electronic store near me.
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I'm not a Ratshack fan, they're hardly the electronics store they were when I was a kid. True, most items are pricey and most of the clerks are clueless. But they do offer local convenience for some parts in many areas that don't have any other local electronics retailer.deft touch said:yeah i went to radioshack overpriced by a football field. I did get a nibbler that was on clearance.
agent420 said:I'm not a Ratshack fan, they're hardly the electronics store they were when I was a kid. True, most items are pricey and most of the clerks are clueless. But they do offer local convenience for some parts in many areas that don't have any other local electronics retailer.
Towards that end, I'm not sure why you're complaining about a 99¢ pack of resistors that you were able to bring home the same day. You would definately wait longer and spend more in shipping if you ordered those online. In that sense, they saved you money.
It's not like they were a dollar each or something. If cost was of that much a concern, you could have probably desoldered them off some junk laying around, 1k is a common enough value.
Sad, but true. Let's step into the Wheyback machine, shall we?RancidWAnnaRIot said:Radioshack use to be a well respected electronics shop?
agent420 said:Sad, but true. Let's step into the Wheyback machine, shall we?
Back in the 70's they were more a radio and parts store; ham radios were very popular and CB's were the hottest thing next to pet rocks and mood rings. My grandfather bought me my first RS 100-in-1 electronics project kit back in '73 or '74 (with a genuine integrated circuit, not in chip form, but some epoxy covered wafer type of thing), it probably got me started in the hobby. Keep in mind that this was an era when most appliances were actually repairable rather than disposable, and the TV repairman made house calls. In the late 70's / early 80's they were the first retail computer store I ever saw, with a pretty impressive selection and geeky (but cool) clerks who knew what they were talking about. Many small businesses and schools used TRS Model 2's for word processing or accounting. This was years before I built my 1st mail order Timex Sinclair Z80 or got my first Vic20, and I was floored that you could hook up an acoustic modem and dial into a local BBS to play Wumpus or Adventure. I'd say this period was their glory days, they were actually quite well respected during this time. I still lust after a pair of Realistic Mach 3 speakers (with 15" woofers)... I think a lot of people have grown up with the consumer crap of the late 80's onwards, forgetting that speakers were once built well, rarely sized to fit on bookshelves and you didn't need no stinkin' subwoofer for good thumping sound. But that's another story
They had a battery club card, and if you were l33t you probably had multiple cards from all the stores in the area, because everything ran on carbon batteries, wall warts were uncommon and alkalines were still Nasa technology (lithium was just an atomic element). Getting a new RS catalog was akin to the Sears Wishbook (though I doubt many here will remember those either) . I nearly fell over a couple of years ago when I discovered they now charge for the catalogs, I guess nothing's free anymore.
They started going downhill fast in the late 80's, and by the 90's they were well on their way to the cheese we know today.
One thing I always thought was cool about Radio Shack stuff was that they always included a schematic in the instruction manual, so if the item needed repairs most of the time you could do it yourself - just drop down to the store for parts. Most clerks at the time were actually able to suggest alternative parts for anything they didn't stock (in other words, they could read and understand schematics). And if you were a young hacker-in-training, reverse engineering schematics was a great way to learn how stuff worked. I haven't purchased any consumer stuff from them in years, and I'd be surprised if they still do that.
I guess the best way to summarize it is that I remember thinking it would be so cool to work there!
agent420 said:Sad, but true. Let's step into the Wheyback machine, shall we?
Back in the 70's they were more a radio and parts store; ham radios were very popular and CB's were the hottest thing next to pet rocks and mood rings.]
Within a standard deviation of 50... Just turned 40, but I started young You're only as old as you act, so I still get cardedFrank4d said:So you must be about 50 or so too? When I graduated from college I was voted the "#1 best of the best" of all students in electrical engineering at the college I attended. At an awards ceremony I was given a set of 10 or so data books containing 10,000 pages of datasheets (re-published by Radioshack) chock full of information for chips that were state of the art stuff in 1978. I used to buy parts there until about that time, before they didn't sell resistors anymore except by special order.
I remember walking into a local Shack some years ago and they were rearranging the store, removing many of the parts bins. It was kind of sad to me, but I guess I understand a little from a business perspective... Electronics became a less popular hobby and the advent of the interweb increased competition from bigger supply houses.Faction said:heh i do work there, and it does suck. our store doesnt even carry resistors of any sort anymore.
But we do carry overpriced LCD's now.
agent420 said:Within a standard deviation of 50... Just turned 40, but I started young You're only as old as you act, so I still get carded
I think I remember the 4000 series cmos was hi-tech around that time, but I probably still had DTL (diode-transistor-logic) parts in my bin. Don Lancanster's CMOS Cookbook was the definitive reference, I still open it up to this day!
I remember walking into a local Shack some years ago and they were rearranging the store, removing many of the parts bins. It was kind of sad to me, but I guess I understand a little from a business perspective... Electronics became a less popular hobby and the advent of the interweb increased competition from bigger supply houses.
Although I don't forsee places like the Shack returning to the parts business, I am optimistic that advances in things like affordable, easy-to-use micro-controllers such as PICS and AVR's are rejuvenating electronics as a hobby. It's a different mindset; in many of my recent projects a single AVR replaces what would have been a full board of discrete logic, but the ability to hack a lot of things with protocols like I2C or SPI is pretty cool. It's like a marriage between hardware and software. My local Shack still stocks some Basic Stamp packages, I guess I should keep an eye out for them to be liquidated and get a good deal.
Now if I ocould only get this surface mount thing down...
technology changes... sometime in the not too far off future kids will probably be amazed there were individual chips used for logic, rather than a whole device being integrated into a single entity like a fpga. And optical technology is just passed that...RancidWAnnaRIot said:People actually used diodes in the past to make logic? wow.. i mean i know how to make basic logic with diodes. but didn't think it was a actually used back in the day lol..
this is a nice history lesson.. hehe
hehe sorry.. i'm new school
Now there's a term I ain't seen in a long time! Like a precursor to today's sms code L8Rdan0813 said:73's
Dan
agent420 said:Now if I ocould only get this surface mount thing down...
deft touch said:where can i buy 5 1/4w 1k resistors online without paying $5 for shipping. I don't want to go to radioshack and theres no other electronic store near me.
Adisharr said:If you owned an electronics supply company would you want to take an order for 5 resistors?