On Thu, Apr 15, 2004 at 10:16:13AM -0400, Frye, Matthew wrote: > >My problem with Radio Shack is their horrid selection of anything > >resembling an electronic component. > > One of the reasons that Radio Shack has changed so much is because of the > press attention (and litigation) surrounding "hackers." You just can't walk > into a RS asking for a 6.5536 MHz crystal anymore. I would guess that RS > got some heat from phone companies and other large corporation$. > > Matt > > PS - If you know what a 6.5536 MHz crystal is, then you know why it's hard > to get them at RS these days.
1. LD is so cheap that what you are suggesting is not worth doing anymore. I remember sitting in meeting with reps of a major service provider. We were discussing fraud detection and suppression methods. There was speculation that these systems would eventually be mothballed because they could not pay for themselves in a deflationary environment. Beside that this there is that people generally don't steal stuff that is free or almost free. 2. Radio Shack is driven by demand. Remember Heathkit? I used to pour over RS catalogs of kits. It's the discrete world. It's like tube based circuits. Nostalgia. It's quaint that RS still carries axial lead components. If I were in charge of RS, that stuff would be gone and I'd move the operation to the web entirely. RS is a consumer gadget and gadget connectivity store. Forget discrete components. Learn DSP. Build at the board level. PC-104 boards are $200 and EMJ in Hillsborough sells 'em. 3. If you want connectors, use Connect-It on Millbrook in Raleigh - they get it right every time. They taught me how to make my own RJ45/Rj11 cables with a righteous tool and pointed out how the Tyco connectors kick butt over cheaper models. Nobody building lots of cables wants cheap parts because you loose savings in debugging. I think that's .06 worth of strong opinion. -- Mike Moving forward in pushing back the envelope of the corporate paradigm. -- TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug TriLUG Organizational FAQ : http://trilug.org/faq/ TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/ TriLUG PGP Keyring : http://trilug.org/~chrish/trilug.asc
