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232 Comments
- WordsnCollision, on 04/24/2009, -5/+92I always wondered, why did the Radio Shack clerks always ask me for my address, even if i was buying a single freakin' battery??
- Puttzy, on 04/24/2009, -2/+88I honestly started on a TRaSh80 and loved it. Lack of a data store made me want to shoot my mom when she turned it off. (we we to poor to get the tape drive)
- MarkusX, on 04/25/2009, -3/+72Ah, the early days of data mining.
- BIGHED, on 04/24/2009, -17/+83My hatred for Radioshack knows no bounds
- inactive, on 04/25/2009, -4/+59That's ***** Isaac Asimov, bitches.
- inactive, on 04/25/2009, -1/+47Radioshack used to be awesome before it turned into a cell phone whoring outlet.
Also, Every kid should learn C. Or C++ if they are in "special" classes. - brewbyer, on 04/25/2009, -0/+41My first computer was the Atari 400.
The first thing I did with it was write a program that would launch a rocket.
But when I typed "run" nothing happened.
Then I learned I had to buy a "BASIC" cartridge.
So I just held down the enter key, scrolling up the program text containing an ASCII rocket.
My family was still impressed.
Later I made the computer make farting noises. - franklymister, on 04/25/2009, -0/+29Clearly you did not grow up in the age of Heathkit and Radio Shack and building breadboard circuits at home.
- michaelpinto, on 04/24/2009, -1/+28I'd make fun of you but the C64 required me to purchase an external floppy disc drive!
- shujin, on 04/25/2009, -0/+24I'd make fun of you but my Macbook Air required me to purchase an external DVD drive!
- jasonboyee, on 04/25/2009, -1/+22To see where the customers were coming from; then target market to those areas.
- Wakkyweed, on 04/25/2009, -1/+22Ohhh... A full 16k of memory for $98 less than last years equivalent! Moore's law strikes again.
- velveetaavenger, on 04/25/2009, -1/+22http://i373.photobucket.com/albums/oo173/velveetaa ...
Indeed. - inactive, on 04/25/2009, -1/+20I like the part where they sold 5x5 cent resistors for $4.99
- JasonHaley, on 04/25/2009, -0/+19I thought I was the only one who gave up on programming by just creating stupid games like these! Once I tried making a romantic game for my ex-girlfriend where she had to navigate it through a love mystery. Instead of reading "hello world" she'd read "you've come to an isolated mansion..do you want to enter?"
40 PRINT, "YOU HAVE DECIDED TO ACCEPT MY OFFER OF ENTERTAINMENT"
50 GOTO 100
...
100 PRINT, "WE ARE HAVING SEX"
I then realized that even this program was too much for work for too much lame and never gave it to her. - DataMonkey, on 04/25/2009, -1/+19I feel like there is a joke in there regarding "C++" and "classes" but I can't find it.
- Janinco, on 04/24/2009, -2/+20FTA
"By the way despite what you’re seeing in these ads with mom smiling about her “organized recipes” the reality was that back in the day Radio Shack seemed to be designed to scare away ladies more than a comic book shop."
LOL. Yep, I'm one of those ladies! :-) - JAWA, on 04/25/2009, -0/+16One of my first computers was the TRS80. I still have it in the basement. I think this was my first program on it. I thought it was so cool.
10 PRINT, "HELLO "
20 GOTO 10 - MarkusX, on 04/25/2009, -0/+15Michael, you weren't required to buy a floppy disc drive. You could have also enjoyed for the datasette ;-))
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datassette
Personally, I loved my 1541 floppy drive, much much better and faster than my friends' tape drives. It could even make music. There was a software, simply called "drive music", that made the 1541 scratch, snare and honk in different keys, so it sounded like a song. Amazing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gnMgmlKi_o
And "finally", The Final Cartridge III extension cartridge for the C=64 was the most awesome thing ever invented for that machine. Among the many functions it offered, I best remember the Freezer, which allowed you to save games at ANY point in the game, even if the game didn't offer such a function at all. I think it simply dumped the whole RAM, but often simplicity is key.
http://home.datacomm.ch/fmeyer/c64/fc3.html - Trick07, on 04/25/2009, -1/+16My mom bought me a Tandy Color Computer with a cassette backup drive... this was 1981 or 1982... All I can is that I spent like 2 hours inputting a ton of commands only to have it put some colors on the screen. I did try my own version of Basic AI though... I could have a specific conversation over and over. I gave up on computers for another 14 years or so.
Yet it turns out my career path would lead me to a System Admin position... - jasonboyee, on 04/25/2009, -1/+15My first PC (Personal Computer) was a 286/386 and I believe it was a Radio Shack Tandy 1000 series. Yes, I know all about the pressure to be the next Gate and Job. Every day I was shoved a tech book in front of my face. Heck, I didn't even learn to speak English properly yet (still can't) and I was already forced to learn many computer languages. Okay, I'm going down memory lane here. Let me stop.
This article is just too touchy. Sniff* Sniff* - Neiby, on 04/25/2009, -0/+14Exactly. Radio Shack used to be very cool. It stopped being cool when it decided to change into what it is today, just another electronics store.
- brundlefly76, on 04/25/2009, -1/+15Yep, I taught myself programming on a TRS-80 Color Computer that hooked up to the tv - I had the tape drive too.
At school we learned on TRS-80's.
The TRS-80's weren't 'trash' - they were, afaik, the most accessible personal computers for some time.
I think people have a hard time remembering when there werent Best Buys and Apple Stores or Internet - for most of us during this time, Radio Shack was the only place to get gadgets and gizmos. - doctechnical, on 04/25/2009, -0/+14I think I can shed some light on the whole "organize your recipes" thing...
Back in the first days of microcomputers (before the term "personal computer" was coined) the very first hardware geeks who scratch built their own systems (and I'm not talking about buying a mostly populated MOBO, plugging in the CPU/RAM and hooking up cables, I mean soldering EVERY fricking component into place) would be asked "Well, what can you do with that thing?"
And very few had an answer that a layman would understand. Either you loved to hack, or you didn't. And they did it for the love of hacking, but how do you explain that to your next-door neighbor who sells insurance and because of movies and TVs thinks a 9-track tape drive unit is a "computer". I mean maybe you were building it just to explore cellular automata, but 99% of the people thought the Game of Life required a Pop-O-Matic, not a computer.
So given they'd dumped a couple grand (70's dollars, mind you!) into this project, they came up with some rather lame applications everyday people could understand: You could balance your notebook. You could organize recipe collections.
And of course "normal" people thought those were nuts, I need paper and a pencil to balance my checkbook, 3x5 cards and a box to organize my recipes, and you need a $2000 computer? Two grand buys a ***** of index cards. So people would just shake their heads and walk away. Today those people are doing their finances in Quicken, and downloading recipes-on-demand from the Internet.
And those stupid checkbook/recipe cliches hung on FOREVER. Anyhow, that's my recollection of how it came to be. The End. - mouthymadness, on 04/25/2009, -0/+14Honestly, what store these days besides online stores sells circuit boards anymore? They used to have their own line of speaker cones but that stopped a few years ago I heard from a worker.
I love radio shack because they always have that odd part I'm looking for. - e68895f, on 04/25/2009, -2/+15No doubt he's programming his first virus....
- barfooz, on 04/25/2009, -2/+15How about Python? Learn CS concepts without the segfaults.
- lucutus, on 04/25/2009, -0/+12Hey now I resmeble that remark! That was one of the first computers I got to code on and it's TRS80 not (TSR)
- zonk3r, on 04/25/2009, -0/+12Data mining implies you already have the data. Data collection is what RadioShack was doing. You can mine it later...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_mining - zonk3r, on 04/25/2009, -0/+11Actually you could make a TRS-80 play a lot of interesting sound effects. It wasn't FCC Class B certified which meant it radiated RF like a flamethrower. The interesting side effect of this is that you could use an AM radio near the computer to tune into the frequency the computer was emitting and hear it processing. When people discovered this many games started to take advantage of this "feature" and have music far more complex than the beeps and boops it was capable of playing through its simple built in sound circuit.
- pprkut, on 04/25/2009, -5/+16Server's down already. http://rorr.im/digg.com/hardware/why_our_son_is_ev ...
- Cyclist110, on 04/25/2009, -0/+11I started to refuse to give them any info. They never once refused me a sale.
- Mayday, on 04/25/2009, -0/+11No offense, but you obviously haven't studied a lot of programming languages. Now don't get me wrong, there are plenty of languages that are similar. But writing in an object oriented language compared to a procedural language is a hell of a lot more than just syntax.
- MisterFurious, on 04/25/2009, -0/+10To get you on their mailing list and send you catalogs. Seriously.
- jscnet, on 04/25/2009, -0/+10don't forget the semicolon for the full side-scrolling effect:
10 PRINT "HELLO";
20 GOTO 10
HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO
BREAK
▋ - compgeek, on 04/25/2009, -1/+11I'm too young to remember when these originally came out (born in 85) but my first elementary school had a lot of C64's and other such machines in the early 90's. seeing a TRS80 brings back memories of being in 1st or 2nd grade and playing all the simple games and actually enjoying it. Simpler times before the Pentium came out and the speed wars began.
- adml_shake, on 04/25/2009, -3/+13Don't fool your selves parents. He's drawing some 8bit porn to upload to the BBS.
- whahaa, on 04/25/2009, -0/+10i always gave them random combinations of numbers and street names.
- olenick, on 04/25/2009, -1/+10I was always jealous of the kids whose families could afford a TRS-80 (or Apple or Commodore or any computer). I was able to get night-time programming in at IU growing up, on the PLATO system which I consider the precursor to the web browser. We were linked to them and others through some sort of ancient modem and through shared memory could write programs not unlike ancient precursors of modern web apps.
Lots of great tech and people came out of that system. Many consider real-time chat and bulletin-boards to either have been invented or at least perfected there (by David Wooley, who was a kid himself though older than me). Ray Ozzie was one of the heads of the project, though he was a lot older and part of the infamous and almost never seen Group S admins: if an "S-Man" showed up you'd done something seriously bad.
Our terminals were enormous and has these tiny plasma touch-screens that glowed with orange pixels: the whole system seemed incredibly cool back then and, I have to admit, still does now.
Been a software engineer my whole life thanks to those early years. The younger generation might think these old ads were dorky but I wish some of the magic would come back to the field: it'd inspire more engineers and fewer MBA's, which the US really needs. - franklymister, on 04/25/2009, -0/+9"you can see the pressure on every young member of Gen X to grow up and be the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates"
Not in the early '80s. Apple and Commodore were the powerhouses of home computing, but Steve Jobs was still not a household name, and no one had heard of Bill Gates. (MS-DOS was still struggling to compete with CP/M, and neither was commonly used in home computers until a few years later.)
There was pressure on kids to be computer programmers, sure, but only because all the magazine articles at the time were saying that there would be millions of tech jobs in the coming decades. No one expected their kids to actually be entrepreneurs if they were "learning computers." - pedepy, on 04/26/2009, -0/+9good call.
- PunchRockgroin, on 04/25/2009, -1/+10Life was so much blurrier back then.
- megaton, on 04/25/2009, -0/+8Uh... Radio Shack's still got 'em.
- Myztry, on 04/25/2009, -0/+8The CoCo was a nice machine. Mainly for the Motorola 6809e CPU it used. It had 16bit address registers which made programming so much easier than say the C64 (6502 - indirect 16bit addressing).
The Basic was a bit lame (being written by Microsoft) and couldn't touch the Basic supplied with the BBC Micro (structured loops & even inline assembly).
The C64 took it's place. The processor wasn't as good, but raster interrupts and sprites allowed cool looking stuff to be done.
Oh, and I even brought OS-9 for the Tandy CoCo which allowed multitasking (but not GUI) before anything else domestic I know off. Motorola built multitasking capability into their domestic processors WAY before Intel stepped up to the plate. The Amiga's 68000 is another good example. - Torx, on 04/25/2009, -0/+8...back when Radio Shack was actually cool, and Johnny 5 could repair himself. We'll never see those days again.. They should rename the franchise as "CellphoneShack".
- inactive, on 04/25/2009, -0/+8It was never awesome, just slightly less crappy.
- Kiboney, on 04/25/2009, -0/+8Kids like me have trouble engineering today - everywhere I ***** go there is a radioshack store selling cellphones and crap... I cannot believe that they actually replaced real engineering stores. Even if I do find the right resistor or transistor that I need it's overpriced in radioshack. I just have the feeling that in the future there will be less engineers because engineering is not being as encouraged as before.
- DaigojiGai, on 04/24/2009, -5/+13I once worked at RadioSHARK - long ago as a wetnose in undergrad. That lasted around 2 months before I got some damn sense.
That said, the subject of the story brought back fond memories. Early 90s seeing Wing Commander 2 for the PC made me finally convince my folks that I needed to upgrade my old 80s x86 PCjr, to a 486 - simply to play WC2 - ran out got another IBM (think it was a valuepoint before I started building my own pcs) first soundblaster, 2400 baud modem,and I was ready to rock... So I guess I gotta thank Radioshack for getting me back into pc gaming when I was in jr high in the very early 90s.
But deep down inside I say FRAK RADIOSHARK! ungh... - EMFK, on 04/24/2009, -3/+10Wow! A flash from the past. Dang, I remember those commercials as well.
- huff51, on 04/25/2009, -0/+6maybe he mowed lawns and saved up the $299. his parents could be murders and rapists.
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