It is the day before my team was scheduled to present our senior project. We had spent months designing, prototyping, and testing circuits for a vacuum tube guitar amp and a handful of effects.
We handled all of the documentation first, assuming it would be the worst part of our final prep. The effects were already installed in their shiny enclosures. The only thing left to do was assemble the amp. I had gone through the pre-amp, power amp, and tone stack separately, and the assembly at this time reflected that, with a handful of modules jumpered together. It didn't sound great, but it worked.
It is 10pm the day before my team was scheduled to present our senior project. Re-Assembling the amp in a presentable enclosure is taking a lot longer than I had assumed. My three teammates are with me, but mainly for support. I mean... I didn't really have measurements for wire, and how many people can really solder inside an 8"x12"x2" enclosure?
It is 4am the morning my team was scheduled to present our senior project. 2 teammates have left... I am baffled by how long this is taking.
It is 8am the morning my team was scheduled to present our senior project. I finally finish. My teammate grabs a guitar and I connect the amp to the speaker cabinet. He turns it on... nothing. We are too tired to panic and skip straight to sulking. I grab a meter to start checking things, but the issue jumps out at me as soon as I open the amp: the fuse holder we mounted in this case is empty. Our test rigs had not used fuses, because we were just some wild (stupid? lucky?) kids I guess. We designed it into the final assembly for obvious reasons.
A quick re-wire to test the balance of the work validated the non fuse related portions of the project, so we went to Village Inn and ate breakfast. On the way back to my duplex we stopped at RadioShack and bought a fuse.
I restored the project to spec prior to our presentation. Somehow self oscillating delays and hendrix riffs mangled by logic gate glitch synth effects command enough attention to keep people's attention away from checking your wiring up against your schematic.
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Most technically inclined people have a complicated relationship with RadioShack.
The function which determines the ultimate aim of one's view of The Shack has a lot of variables. What are your feelings on newspapers? Have you ever saved a project by driving 2 miles to buy an op-amp? How much does spending $3 on an op-amp bother you? Where does an employee directing you to the section of the store which sells boomboxes after hearing "op-amp" fall on your "Rage - LOLZ" spectrum?
Personally? I have always appreciated RadioShack.
I will never understand how they made enough money to stay open.
Their inability to capitalize on the hacker/maker/STEM momentum of the past 5ish years is as confounding as it is depressing.
Trying to upsell a cell phone plan to a man buying a 555 timer always struck me more as a bizarre joke than a call to consumer arms.
Every non conference attending work trip I have ever made has featured a trip to RadioShack. Design engineers usually get sent on trips because something they designed is not working in a pretty significant way. Working on the road is an art in and of itself, especially if you don't check a bag (fun fact: you can't carry on a screw driver that is >6" long, but a PCBA that can talk ARINC-429? Totally fine!), but you will always need something you don't have. A tool, a part, some wire, etc.
The parts bin at RadioShack is limited, but I have solved a lot of problems with it. Their cheap soldering irons are terrible, but when swapping some resistors will send you home earlier than waiting for a replacement PCBA, you make it work.
It is easy to mock RadioShack, but I always saw it as the store in a mall that sold perf boards. How can you tell me that the world is a better place now that I cannot buy a perf board at the mall???
