/diy/ - Do It Yourself

What's the point? Why not just stock up on cheap ebay bulk? For $20 you could have thousands of resistors/capacitors/transistors.

>>606501
I'm talking about "emergency oh shit i blew out the resistor on my stereo I need a new one ASAP" situation. Yes I can order a shit ton of gear, but there's no guarantee it will have what I need.

>>606488

Fry's has a components section. Like with Radio Shack, you pay an absurd premium (I think I saw a 2n2222 there in a pack all by its lonesome for something like $1.20). But if you GOTTA have it immediately...

If I were you, I'd check to see if there's an actual electronics supplier/show floor around you. I have a place near me that caters to electronics guys, and has a bunch of miscellaneous and surplus crap. Something like half their total square footage is behind the rear counter and dedicated to components.

>>606504

I will add that, if you have a decent collection of repair components, odds are Fry's/Radio Shack/whatever isn't going to have what you need, because, at that point, anything that breaks which you don't have a replacement for on-hand is liable to be something fairly specific, especially considering a failed discrete part has a good chance of causing a cascade failure into an IC or something.

If you're in a city big enough to have a radio shack, you're probably somewhere with a few other hobbyists and maybe even a hackerspace. Around here, the hackerspaces have epic parts stashes. Even without, knowing the local crowd is a pretty good way to occasionally come up with "I NEED A 74LS74 RIGHT NOW!"

>>606488
>So if Radioshack shuts down for good (looking pretty likely)
The company said Tuesday that the closings will leave it with more than 4,000 stores, including 900 operated as franchise locations.

>20% closing
80% still open

I used to think like you, OP, but then I realized you can get complete sets of many components for a few bucks.

You can buy complete sets of resistors, capacitors, diodes, transistors, and LEDs for less than 100$ together.
Anything that you don't have on hand is unlikely to be available locally, and digikey ships next day anyways.

There is really no reason to ever buy electrical components in a store because the markup is beyond disgusting. You are generally talking 5$ for a box of two resistors, 1$ for a 5mm LED...

>>606598

yes BUT, even if the part on digikey/mouser is 15cents, I'm still paying $5-8 for shipping, so in a case where I just need ONE quick buy, a $1.50 transistor would be ok for me. And sadly there's no Frys in ohio,

>>606488
I thought they shut down in the early 1990s. lol

>mouser and digikey online

>>606488
amazon, digikey, ebay...

I used to manage a radio shack franchise ask me anything.

>>606615

What IS radioshack selling the most? cellphones? and what was the usually demographic? teens and confused moms? or did you actually get hobbyists etc.

>>606619
RadioShack: You have questions, We have blank stares (tm)

>>606600
So, next time you order components for a project, add a small selection of extra components to keep on hand.

>>606619
We had a big mix. Corporate pushed cell phones hard core but they never payed. We lost probably $20k perusing cellphones.

We did very well selling headphones. We where by far the best source for audio anything in our town. We had a direct deal with skull candy because RS usually gave us shit deals on them.

We also had the only reliable source for coin cell batteries and cordless house phone batteries. Well we didn't actual have all the cordless phone batteries but we had enough of them to get the cells to match and we cut the ends of the customers old batteries and crimp them onto new cells.

Coin cell batteries at Radio Shack retail for $5 each and cost $1 wholesale, which is still a rip off. I would buy them by the hundreds from china at a few cents each and sell them at half the normal price. You may think we would make less profit that way but customers liked it. The batteries for hex bug toys we would sell packs of 10 or 25 batteries at $1.25 or $1 each. Folks would stock up and mail them to relatives because of the great deal they got. We payed $0.17 each for them.

HDMI cords where illogically expensive everywhere for a few years. The cheapest one sold by walmart or RS proper was like $30, I got 500 from china for $1 each and sold them for $14, they sold fast too.

Some people would come in from the adds but most of our hot items where things we brought in on the side.

Demographics where really well mixed, we had old people who couldn't get any help at Walmart. We had school kids wanting parts for projects or head phones. Quite a few folks needing help fixing things. Really there wasn't a core demographic.

BTW in case some of you don't quite understand. A franchise store is owned by real people corporate stores are owned by RadioShack directly.

>>606620
Yes most radioshacks are really really bad.

They have these "training" videos and tests to try to teach sales people the most basic shit like stereo 3.5mm jacks vs mono. I found it to be detrimental to staff, literally worse than useless.

I had a no tolerance for bullshit policy, if the staff did not know something they where to write the question down and someone who did know would get back to them and everyone would learn about it.

Feeding a customer bullshit is one of the worst things you can do to destroy confidence in your store and I've been in so many other stores that fed so much bullshit.

>>606600
Fuck your "just one" bullshit, spend the money that it would cost for a decent soldering iron and buy component kits.

>>606644
Your so roody tooty. Mind you don't poke yourself on all those edges.

People who do this stuff every day sure a kit is fine but what happens when you've used the last of a particular component out of the kit. Some anon on 4chan will tell you to just buy a whole new kit rite. For most people who need a transistor and capacitor once or twice every four years a kit of components is just clutter.

What the hell happened to Radio Shack?

It used to be just about my favorite store. Then it became just overpriced cables, the "mall store" version of consumer electronics (poor selection and overpriced), and weird, junky overpriced toys.

>>606631
not to be a grammar nazi but *were...

Me and my EE coursemates typically use element14, it's some good shit. The stuff usually comes over in two days.

Just google "Electronics supply $YOUR_TOWN" and I bet you come up with a few places. I used to go to radio shack all the time, then they rebranded to "The Source" in Canada and turned into shitty cell phone stores. Imagine my surprise when I learned that there were four other stores in my home city that were way better than I ever remember Radio Shack being.