I have a much better solution to the problem of energy. There are thousands upon thousands of people behind bars. Oh you were talking about prison.... I had this mental image of people sitting behind a bar, drinking, and happily peddling away.
I'm from Europe, so I don't really get it... but please, help me. Why is it that the majority of Americans (and many Europeans to be fair) seem to think that only "Big Name" chain stores can provide these essential services to them? I tried supporting the smaller shops, really I did. Pre-web I would check out computer shopper then visit the local shops looking for the item in question. I tried to support the shops that were most supportive of me when I was a teen, but they all gave up the ghost. The ones which remained pretty much ordered from computer shopper on demand with the exception of a few.
There is an indy shop that has been around for a few years which I will continue to support, except for ram. Ram is one of those things i'll always mail order.
Pizza Box form factor Dell, PS cable cluster only had 1 plug available for HDD's, floppy's power cable was far too short (and non compatible maybe?). Simply needed a female->male->male(->male) ecksten-sor. The drive chassis even allows for a second HDD by design. Was fairly certain a place with the prefix "Comp" would carry something like I described, but yeah retail space is at a premium in midtown. Radio Shack probably does *shrug* I wound up buying it online. I would just call what you are talking about a Y-cable. Molex is kind of the defacto name for pin in socket connectors, though both Molex and AMP made them. "Power Y-Cable" or "Power Y-Adpater cable" are typical. These were more common place in the age of exteral drive cases, esp when you had MFM to SCSI controlers. Radio Shack's catalog still states for use on two 5.25 inch floppy drives. Expect them to be really dusty.
That is something my local compusa DID carry and is listed as a local $5.00 item. This is something I was able to buy at radio shack 20 years ago, and is available at 9 radio shacks in a 1.15mile radius from 10018. The more spiffy/garish/spendy Catalog #: 28-1209 is only sold at the WEST 57TH store.
I am far from a grammar nazi, but correct terminology is rather handy to communicate what you need. "HD Power supply jumper" threw me for a loop.
So now all we have to do is to raze all the messy European cities built along those twisting centuries (or millenia) old roads and ways and rebuild them along neat grids.
No reason why it shouldn't work.:) Sigh...
No one is proposing that Europe tear up their cities and replace them. I can't say that American cities are immune to generalized unplanned quarks of travel.
I am saying that the grid system, as in the first two digits of an address which correspond to house number, the rest the block number, is very handy. Proper, or at least consistent use of the words Avenue, Boulevard, Court, Drive, Road, Lane, Way is also very handy. I'm looking at a map of Liverpool and notice whether a road travels east-west, north-south, or diagonally it's usually named a street.
I for one will continue to support my local, privately run computer store. I support mine when I can. But it's 12 miles away. The big box stores are under 5 miles away. I have not taken advantage of their support options, which is pretty limited to a testing station with known good CPU/RAM/video card, which in all fairness is all you need.
* It's not an auction.
* Do you see an end date on the listing? Firstly thanks for the feedback. I think the parent was being critical of someone who needs a continuous supply of a product wondering "what happens after the sale is over and the seller has moved on". At least that's how I ready it I could be wrong. I'm not too concerned as the description is for a product with a very specific name I can google.
Have you used these? What provisions are there for labeling? If I do have to make a change to my storage system I would prefer one for the better. To me that would mean a wrap around label like on a DVD long box which could be what they mean by "SLEEVE PACK". I'm a little concerned about their size, the last time I bought double Cd cases of this style they were a couple mm too large for my CD rack.
I don't know why people hate them so much. I'm not sure why either. You have the "Got questions? We've got blank stares, and cell phones" angle. There is also their history of keeping outdated goods in stock and not adjusting the price. Single sided 3.5 inch floppies, odd ball printer cables that only worked with one Tandy laser printer.
For consumer electronics they have always been rather soso, though schematics sold with their products was always a major bonus. And for most of us, if we need goods we can either mail order or hit a real electronics shop, though RatShack tends to be open later than 5pm, and tends to be open on Sundays. When I was in Merida and needed a power supply for my router, there was at least a Radio Shack, and I was thankful to be able to get one.
It's not like it's my first choice for a lot of things, but they do carry lots of useful items.
What do Radio Shack even sell these days? If you asked me, I couldn't tell you. Sprint cellphone contracts, some toys, and low-functioning A/V bits and pieces. It's been a while since I've been inside a radioshack. The last time I checked they carried some electronic parts, connectors. Let me hit the local flyer
1. Cellphones. Their prices seem to be good on the pay as you go phones, $10 in store or free with rebate. 2. Cellphone accessories 3. Standalone GPS receivers 4. Cordless Phones 5. Radios, two way, and scanners 6. Computers/printers 7. Digital Cameras 8. MP3 players 9. Semi-hightech toys 10. WiFi equipment
Who buys that stuff anyway? I don't know the wireless headphones look kind of nice. The iGo universal notebook power supply (limited to like 70watts or so) looks rather handy. Memorex DVDs @ $13 per 50 isn't a bad deal, and hell froogle agrees. I don't know the going rate of SD memory bout $20 for 2gb doesn't sound bad, on par with other big box stores.
I'm not going to say the shack is the best place to shop. At one point and time they were a reasonable place to get odds and ends that no other bugger carried, well no other bugger that was open much past 5pm. I will say they seem to be focusing on less in the way of nitch crap and crap everyone can find useful. And yes, cellphones do fall into this category of things everyone can use (Would you like a cellphone with that).
I have seen several times that the prices on Fry's website don't match the prices in the store, and have been told several times that they don't even honor web prices in the store This is true. In fact for a long time Frys didn't have their own website, but rather bought out Outpost.com. I know other retailers have their inventory connected to their website, but not everyone is that advanced.
This is my biggest bitch about Frys. The only way to find out their prices of things is to either go in the store, or catch their weekly insert in the newspaper, which is often limited to one city. Those who put the flyer online have stopped.
I'll never forget the experience...I'd just arrived in Atlanta in 1994, and I was in a Marietta CompUSA. I'd asked the CompUSA staffer about a particular accessory for my Power Macintosh 7100/66.
"A Mac? Get a real computer!" The guy did have a point. If the 7100 was anything like the 6100 than it would have had a HDI-45 video connector, which required either an adapter to DA-15 or HD DB-15, though in my experience you had both. On top of that, were those damned AAUI-15 connectors for the Ethernet transceivers rather than the old standard of DA-15, which I imagine they didn't use because you might confuse it for the monitor connector, which was no longer DA-15 about that time. And ontop of all this, you needed a god damned apple branded scsi drive to load the OS.
I'm not being critical of the Powermac, it was a nice computer. It's big drawback was you couldn't get freaking cable accessories at Radioshack. And after hearing "we can either get the part in a week for $45 per, or I can take a hacksaw and blowtorch to this bad boy".
Paper sleeves. Much more economical and efficient. Unless you absolutely must have the quad slim cases for some reason. I like spines. Paper sleeves are among the more space efficient means of storage, but they really suck for indexing. Going with binders and sleeves is a slightly better idea, but only work well for 20 discs and above in the same theme group.
Debian fits nicely in a quad case, a season of monk fits nicely in a quad case.
Last month I took a little bike trip to the CompUSA in midtown Manhattan looking for a simple HDD power line jumper. Zilch. SATA ribbons, ATA/IDE... No power cable supplies. This has not been my compusa experience. Last year before my local compusa store closed they carried (note I'm not sure what a "HDD power line jumper", and power supply cable is rather cryptic)
1. Sata cables 2. ATA cables including the round ones 3. 20 pin to 24pin power supply adapters 4. 10 jumpers in a box (granted jumpers I've always gotten for free, either from a repair shop who didn't know what to charge for them, or from defunct equipment).
Also... they carried some really nice socket 7 heat syncs rated for the higher end (400-450mhz) chips, various high end 939 syncs, aluminum face plates for older nec drives, 3 prong power cables (aka mickey mouse) like on acer laptops, male to female & male to male power supply adapters/cables so you actually could jack your monitor into your PC power supply, assuming you had one of those jacks onboard.
Perhaps they ditched their useful but slower selling stock in the past year. CompUSA was never supergreat, but in my experience they were better than bestbuy or the super office stores.
Ok, yeah use the internet was lame. Apologies. Apology accepted, though I was being mostly humorous. Many times I've contacted some companies regarding trivial laptop parts and their recommendation was to go on the internet, which was exactly what I did. One might be critical of my use of Slashdot for this end, but the closure of CompUSA does affect my directly in the fact that I based my media storage system on a product only they sold.
I think labels should stick ok. They are not clear, but tranlucent, so labels on the inside are visible. I usually just write on the cds, and can read them ok.
I always liked Cyberguys, they have odd little things one might need occasionally. I applicate the link. The big seller for me are spines, the ability to affix a label to the spine. This can be accomplished with wrap around labels like on DVD longboxes, or glued to the back.
I always wondered why Radio Shack didn't turn into a huge computer retailer, which was a perfect growth for the only store like that until PCs got huge, even selling the first laptop to sell well, the TRS-80 Model 100 [wikipedia.org]. Someone else pointed out Incredible Universe, not to speak of Computer City. Tandy did release many PCs including the Model 100 which was for the time period a nice laptop with stellar battery life.
The best of Radioshack was always the nitch aspect, the hobbyist/AV customer. You could pickup trivial electronic parts, they kept reasonable hours, and the educational toys were excellent. They did carry some decent audio gear at one point, but probably the most important was they offered schematics of their audio gear sold under their label, including the stuff made by RCA.
Part of their downfall was their attempt to enter the PC clone business. I don't know the inside details only the external man on the street perspective. They had a good thing going with the CoCo till the users IMHO humbly requested software. So the clones came. I'm not going to speak ill of the systems them selves, they did pretty well for them selves. They came with MS dos and Deskmate which was not horrible in 1984. They were first on the block to release a system with a 80186 which was a good deal faster than those other 8086/8088 clones on the market. They were among the LEAST IBM compatible in part IIRC due to the fact that their first clone was designed to be PCjr compatible. They had some good ideas but really lacked follow through and their timing was awful.
Another big loss of radio shack were those damned CueCats, $30 million IIRC. I'm among those who actually saw the CueCat as being a good idea. The biggest failure was not recognizing the power of the nitch market first. Those Cuecats sold lots of copies of media database software, something that Digital Convergence would have been wise to consider first. Imagine people willing to scan in their collection, give up their privacy and accept recommendations.
Their big loss IMHO was when they ditched their stock of component speakers, turn table styli, the stuff that was their bread and butter for years. Old enthusiasts would have to go mail order or specialized electronics shops.
Wow, use the internet. I have always enjoyed this criticism, esp when I "was" using the internet. Seriously I don't have a name for that style of case, so a keyword search is rather useless, so I asked on slashdot.
Oh and heres the 4up in flexible polypropelene so it wont shatter like the styrene ones And color coded to boot. And cheaper I applicate the link. I liked the compusa ones as you could easily (sic) glue labels to the case. I'm not sure how easily you could do that with the polypropelene but at least you sugested something.
If I were you I would look into some of those zip-up CD binders. They store a lot of CDs in a tiny space too. Thanks for the advice. There are cases where they would be useful, but for my main application, which is downloading series and organizing them, it's not. Also it's the fact that I have an expandable CD tower. It's what I own already to store sticks, might as well stick to what I have. Binders are cool too.
It got to where their prices were so ridiculously high without a sale, and the "sale" required a rebate to get a decent price, that it was no longer worth shopping there. CompUSA wasn't alone in the rebate game. Much to my delight OfficeMax was right next to my local CompUSA and swore to not to rebates. I know bargain hunters loved playing the rebate game, but you know what I would gladly pay just a little more just to get the good price in the first place.
I'm not going to miss the snooty comments made by their staff members after asking them where a part is... and then try to sell me a warranty on top of it. Give me a break. Margins usually drop in most industries over time. Poor business design is what killed this beast. I remember looking for a PCMCIA to CompactFlash adapter, they were not quite grasping that CompactFlash was so large that it wasn't on those 5 in one units, handy though they may be. I can't blame them too much as CF is rather old as far as standards go.
But the warranty... you do have to keep in mind that was really their bread and butter, the store warranty. For something like an inkjet it was a godsend. Esp the sub $100 epsons, you know the ones, the ones that get a waste ink full error and refuse to print, with only a cryptic error "needs service". Cheep parts and a cheep warranty could keep you in new printers for a while.
Seriously, I know I accept the risk of being modded down here but I use these guys. They fit 4 CDs in the size of one standard jewel case. It was a pain when they left my state, and it'll be a bigger pain when they close their doors.
I never really liked them, personally. I liked them just fine, as much as one can like a big box computer store. They were somewhere between the big office stores and best buy, and actually did carry much in the way of essential hardware such as fans, heatsync compound, screws, and other misc things. It beats a trek to frys which for me is about 30 miles away.
When I got my C64, it came with a 300 page manual with detailed documentation on e.g. how to program the built-in sound and graphic chips. Which values you had to write to which registers and so on. I learned how to program assembler by reading this thing, at age 11. All computer documentation was excellent during this time frame, though I can't speak about Atari as I got mine second hand. The big selling point was education and the more documentation the better. TI was pretty good as well. I don't remember the page count but I remember having to buy several binders to fit the huge amounts of data that came with it.
IIRC in later years you had to pay bucks to get the same level of documentation.
oldschool This is one reason I felt the Commodore was a bit kludgey at the time. The Apple could auto boot, the Atari could also. It seems like an academic function of a disk drive but for some reason was missing in the 64.
Soldering your way to an upgrade. No support for anything beyond the stock ram. Trivial parts that you just had to have to make shit work, hard to find and cost too damned much. Trivial upgrades being sold as a new model "Now with tint control", and software geared toward that upgrade. Having to buy upgrades that were processed through the main company, which are no different than the stock part with the exception of a minor Rom tweak. Spending hundreds/thousands on a given platform only to have it be abandoned. Rats nest of wires. Wires for your disc drive, extra wires for your printer port, each requiring it's own power supply.
I know it's popular on Slashdot to bitch about Microsoft, but imagine if Commodore won the computer revolution, or Atari.
I too stayed way too long with the TI-99/4A, up until 1990, until I got a used Atari 800XL. Yes, I also had the PEB & such, learning to BBS on it in 1989. The PEB I got on close out back in like 1983 or 1984. It was sold at a big box store (Bests IIRC), on display, but no bugger wanted it, well except me and near as I was aware it was the only means of hooking up a modem. I don't remember exactly what it cost but I do recall something like a 90% discount.
I think it was 1985/1986 I moved and got exposed to the Atari. I wasn't really connected to any TI users groups and I wanted a PC with something that resembled hardware and software support. The TI was frustrating as there were games I wanted, such as the Scott Adams series but there was really no way to buy them. The Atari was a huge leap forward but commodore got a corner on the market. It was really too bad as the TI really supported expansion via the PE box and sidecars. The Atari hard some very nice hardware for it, such as the ICD Multi-IO which on board 256 to 1meg ram disk, Scsi, serial, and parallel ports. You "could" get hard discs for the commodore, but it seemed like they were a kludge without the option of upgrading the drives them selves, but perhaps someone who owned one could share some detail on this subject.
Slashdot Mirror
There is an indy shop that has been around for a few years which I will continue to support, except for ram. Ram is one of those things i'll always mail order.
That is something my local compusa DID carry and is listed as a local $5.00 item. This is something I was able to buy at radio shack 20 years ago, and is available at 9 radio shacks in a 1.15mile radius from 10018. The more spiffy/garish/spendy Catalog #: 28-1209 is only sold at the WEST 57TH store.
I am far from a grammar nazi, but correct terminology is rather handy to communicate what you need. "HD Power supply jumper" threw me for a loop.
No reason why it shouldn't work.
No one is proposing that Europe tear up their cities and replace them. I can't say that American cities are immune to generalized unplanned quarks of travel.
I am saying that the grid system, as in the first two digits of an address which correspond to house number, the rest the block number, is very handy. Proper, or at least consistent use of the words Avenue, Boulevard, Court, Drive, Road, Lane, Way is also very handy. I'm looking at a map of Liverpool and notice whether a road travels east-west, north-south, or diagonally it's usually named a street.
* Do you see an end date on the listing? Firstly thanks for the feedback. I think the parent was being critical of someone who needs a continuous supply of a product wondering "what happens after the sale is over and the seller has moved on". At least that's how I ready it I could be wrong. I'm not too concerned as the description is for a product with a very specific name I can google.
Have you used these? What provisions are there for labeling? If I do have to make a change to my storage system I would prefer one for the better. To me that would mean a wrap around label like on a DVD long box which could be what they mean by "SLEEVE PACK". I'm a little concerned about their size, the last time I bought double Cd cases of this style they were a couple mm too large for my CD rack.
For consumer electronics they have always been rather soso, though schematics sold with their products was always a major bonus. And for most of us, if we need goods we can either mail order or hit a real electronics shop, though RatShack tends to be open later than 5pm, and tends to be open on Sundays. When I was in Merida and needed a power supply for my router, there was at least a Radio Shack, and I was thankful to be able to get one.
It's not like it's my first choice for a lot of things, but they do carry lots of useful items.
Commission
The last bit of data would suggest they were on commission in 2002.
Still on commission?
Stills looks like they are.
For more on radioshack sucking visit radioshackstucks
1. Cellphones. Their prices seem to be good on the pay as you go phones, $10 in store or free with rebate.
2. Cellphone accessories
3. Standalone GPS receivers
4. Cordless Phones
5. Radios, two way, and scanners
6. Computers/printers
7. Digital Cameras
8. MP3 players
9. Semi-hightech toys
10. WiFi equipment Who buys that stuff anyway? I don't know the wireless headphones look kind of nice. The iGo universal notebook power supply (limited to like 70watts or so) looks rather handy. Memorex DVDs @ $13 per 50 isn't a bad deal, and hell froogle agrees. I don't know the going rate of SD memory bout $20 for 2gb doesn't sound bad, on par with other big box stores.
I'm not going to say the shack is the best place to shop. At one point and time they were a reasonable place to get odds and ends that no other bugger carried, well no other bugger that was open much past 5pm. I will say they seem to be focusing on less in the way of nitch crap and crap everyone can find useful. And yes, cellphones do fall into this category of things everyone can use (Would you like a cellphone with that).
This is my biggest bitch about Frys. The only way to find out their prices of things is to either go in the store, or catch their weekly insert in the newspaper, which is often limited to one city. Those who put the flyer online have stopped.
"A Mac? Get a real computer!" The guy did have a point. If the 7100 was anything like the 6100 than it would have had a HDI-45 video connector, which required either an adapter to DA-15 or HD DB-15, though in my experience you had both. On top of that, were those damned AAUI-15 connectors for the Ethernet transceivers rather than the old standard of DA-15, which I imagine they didn't use because you might confuse it for the monitor connector, which was no longer DA-15 about that time. And ontop of all this, you needed a god damned apple branded scsi drive to load the OS.
I'm not being critical of the Powermac, it was a nice computer. It's big drawback was you couldn't get freaking cable accessories at Radioshack. And after hearing "we can either get the part in a week for $45 per, or I can take a hacksaw and blowtorch to this bad boy".
Debian fits nicely in a quad case, a season of monk fits nicely in a quad case.
(note I'm not sure what a "HDD power line jumper", and power supply cable is rather cryptic)
1. Sata cables
2. ATA cables including the round ones
3. 20 pin to 24pin power supply adapters
4. 10 jumpers in a box (granted jumpers I've always gotten for free, either from a repair shop who didn't know what to charge for them, or from defunct equipment).
Also... they carried some really nice socket 7 heat syncs rated for the higher end (400-450mhz) chips, various high end 939 syncs, aluminum face plates for older nec drives, 3 prong power cables (aka mickey mouse) like on acer laptops, male to female & male to male power supply adapters/cables so you actually could jack your monitor into your PC power supply, assuming you had one of those jacks onboard.
Perhaps they ditched their useful but slower selling stock in the past year. CompUSA was never supergreat, but in my experience they were better than bestbuy or the super office stores.
I always liked Cyberguys, they have odd little things one might need occasionally. I applicate the link. The big seller for me are spines, the ability to affix a label to the spine. This can be accomplished with wrap around labels like on DVD longboxes, or glued to the back.
The best of Radioshack was always the nitch aspect, the hobbyist/AV customer. You could pickup trivial electronic parts, they kept reasonable hours, and the educational toys were excellent. They did carry some decent audio gear at one point, but probably the most important was they offered schematics of their audio gear sold under their label, including the stuff made by RCA.
Part of their downfall was their attempt to enter the PC clone business. I don't know the inside details only the external man on the street perspective. They had a good thing going with the CoCo till the users IMHO humbly requested software. So the clones came. I'm not going to speak ill of the systems them selves, they did pretty well for them selves. They came with MS dos and Deskmate which was not horrible in 1984. They were first on the block to release a system with a 80186 which was a good deal faster than those other 8086/8088 clones on the market. They were among the LEAST IBM compatible in part IIRC due to the fact that their first clone was designed to be PCjr compatible. They had some good ideas but really lacked follow through and their timing was awful.
Another big loss of radio shack were those damned CueCats, $30 million IIRC. I'm among those who actually saw the CueCat as being a good idea. The biggest failure was not recognizing the power of the nitch market first. Those Cuecats sold lots of copies of media database software, something that Digital Convergence would have been wise to consider first. Imagine people willing to scan in their collection, give up their privacy and accept recommendations.
Their big loss IMHO was when they ditched their stock of component speakers, turn table styli, the stuff that was their bread and butter for years. Old enthusiasts would have to go mail order or specialized electronics shops.
And color coded to boot. And cheaper I applicate the link. I liked the compusa ones as you could easily (sic) glue labels to the case. I'm not sure how easily you could do that with the polypropelene but at least you sugested something.
But the warranty... you do have to keep in mind that was really their bread and butter, the store warranty. For something like an inkjet it was a godsend. Esp the sub $100 epsons, you know the ones, the ones that get a waste ink full error and refuse to print, with only a cryptic error "needs service". Cheep parts and a cheep warranty could keep you in new printers for a while.
Quad Slim jewel cases
Seriously, I know I accept the risk of being modded down here but I use these guys. They fit 4 CDs in the size of one standard jewel case. It was a pain when they left my state, and it'll be a bigger pain when they close their doors.
IIRC in later years you had to pay bucks to get the same level of documentation.
Soldering your way to an upgrade.
No support for anything beyond the stock ram.
Trivial parts that you just had to have to make shit work, hard to find and cost too damned much.
Trivial upgrades being sold as a new model "Now with tint control", and software geared toward that upgrade.
Having to buy upgrades that were processed through the main company, which are no different than the stock part with the exception of a minor Rom tweak.
Spending hundreds/thousands on a given platform only to have it be abandoned.
Rats nest of wires. Wires for your disc drive, extra wires for your printer port, each requiring it's own power supply.
I know it's popular on Slashdot to bitch about Microsoft, but imagine if Commodore won the computer revolution, or Atari.
I think it was 1985/1986 I moved and got exposed to the Atari. I wasn't really connected to any TI users groups and I wanted a PC with something that resembled hardware and software support. The TI was frustrating as there were games I wanted, such as the Scott Adams series but there was really no way to buy them. The Atari was a huge leap forward but commodore got a corner on the market. It was really too bad as the TI really supported expansion via the PE box and sidecars. The Atari hard some very nice hardware for it, such as the ICD Multi-IO which on board 256 to 1meg ram disk, Scsi, serial, and parallel ports. You "could" get hard discs for the commodore, but it seemed like they were a kludge without the option of upgrading the drives them selves, but perhaps someone who owned one could share some detail on this subject.