Radio shack is tanking fast

[kimba1]

I don'tknow about the rest of the country but it's my main source for electronic parts. Meaning when radio shack goes will the fine art of tinkering disappear also. Beside the independent electronics stores is there a radio shack rival to keep us tinkering.

I have some doubts online alternatives are that effective

[Xavier_Onassis]

The Radio Shack near me is staffed by incredibly incompetent people.  It took them nearly an hour for them to tell me they did not have an ethernet filter for my phone. They did not know what it was nor where it might be. So far as I can tell, most of their business is just peddling cell phones.

The same store used to have a manager who knew all about everything. The current staff seems to be only vaguely aware of electricity.

[Plane]

Try Mouser, digikey and element 14.

Depending on what you want.

Digikey is especially good for small components and is good with telephone orders.

Mouser used to have good kits , but I havn't bought from them in years so I don't know about lately.

Element 14 I haven't bought from yet , but they sponsor "the Ben Heck Show" and sell a kit for Rasberry Pi that I am intending to try.

http://www.digikey.com/
http://www.newark.com/great-offers?CMP=KNC-GUSA-GEN-BRAND-REM-NEW-ELEMENT14&mckv=s1MJ9bO2m|pcrid|54593034501|plid|&gclid=CI3YydmsxsMCFZQvgQod0l4AIw
http://www.mouser.com/

It is the online competition that is hurting Rasdioshack. Ebay sells a lot of used stuff and new stuff at deep discounts , but I understand you run a bigger risk of buying broken or counterfeit parts on e-bay.

If you want complete electronics you should try Pricewatch which is a catalog of catalogs. Read the fine print carefully there, the buys are ordered by price not by quality.
Pricewatch http://www.pricewatch.com/

I have bought sound cards and memory chips through pricewatch , but I dealt with a different company every time.

[kimba1]

I just prefer walking down to my corner shack and wander to see what catches my eyes for my next project.

Old fashion notions

[Plane]

Old fashion notions

I like junk collections.

Have you seen the "Ben Heck" show?

http://www.element14.com/community/community/experts/benheck?CMP=KNC-USA-TBHS

[kimba1]

I think i've seen afew of his stuff. I have a rasberry pi for watching tv shows online. Sadly i forgot how to use it since I'm remodeling this past seven months and counting. So no access to my monitors to watch it on.

[Xavier_Onassis]

The best place to find all sorts of electronics in Miami used to be the Hamboree, a sort of  garage sale of electronic junk. It was originally for the Ham radio crowd, but evolved into a computer show.  The last time I went six years ago, it was greatly diminished, because of the availability of stuff online.

[Plane]

http://www.amazon.com/Raspberry-User-Guide-Eben-Upton/dp/1118921666/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&qid=1422988723&sr=8-12&keywords=raspberrypi


I am considering buying some raspberry pi projects, I might buy that through amazon.

[Xavier_Onassis]

What would you do with Raspberry Pi?

Can you do anything actually useful with it?

All I know that it is a single board computer that runs Linux, used for teaching basic computing.

I once took a course in Pascal, which I was told was very versatile.  But it wasn't versatile at all for anything I wanted to do. It was frustrating and largely worthless, rather like learning how to dance by watching Barney the Purple Dinosaur.

[Plane]

What would you do with Raspberry Pi?

It can do streaming video with little modification.

But it is intended to be cheap and easily assembled and to be marketed to students.

It uses Linux and can be very instructive to novice programmers , this is where I come in, my programming skill needs improvement.

Because it is relatively cheap it has been modified in lots of interesting ways , including being stacked into a supercomputer.

[kimba1]

For me it's good for streaming free movies and tv shows. But you need to develope patients to operate it. Because it's so basic it tends to fail abit. But since it's free videos you really can't complain too much

[Christians4LessGvt]

I agree Kimba....Radio Shack will be missed.
I realize it's not as nearly as convenient,
but have you ever been in a Fry's store?
They are ten time better stocked on old style electronic gadgets and parts.
They have several stores in Northern California: (but probably not in walking distance)
Campbell, Concord, Fremont, Palo Alto, Roseville, Sacramento, San Jose, Sunnyvale.

The Fry's here even has Texas Longhorns on the balcony.


   
 

[kimba1]

I know several but all of them not near by I was planning to use them after radio shack goes away and san jose has several places that sell rare electronics junk.

I remember oneplace that actually has a heathkit hero 0ne robot. but that's just displayonly, I totally forgot where that place is hope it`s still around