technology at radio shack

**giveuspurehd** · 05-26-2004 05:39 AM

just a quick story. i do not remember the year , but i went to radio shack to see if they had a satellite reciever that had a optical digital connection.i had a reciever with the technology and wanted to get some use out of it.well i ask fred the manager and he informed me in a stern way that the people of this great country would not stand for anything new like that, and i was one of only a few that actually want something like that.well heres the funny part.one week of going into fred's store, radio shack started airing big time ads,commericals,etc..,about digital surround sound with howie long.i was tempted to go back and ask again, but i had already found a stb with the digital connection.the store i found it in was actually using the stb to show off dd 5.1.so now i am tempted to go ask him about voom hd.hopefully ill get the same response and the next week voom will be in radio shack!

**Sean Mota** · 05-26-2004 09:31 AM

Funny story!

**slacker9876** · 05-26-2004 01:45 PM

I sadly admit that I used to work for Tandy and yes you can get a lot of non-information and bad information there.

I have found the best guys in the electronic businesses are the fellas that have their own little hole in the wall shop. These are VERY hard to find but most of the people that work in them know what a resistor is, they know what a capacitor is and they know the answers to many questions about things like SPDIF because they are the same nerds that designed it!

To stay on topic, in general in is very difficult to find folks in retail who have a good knowledge of what they sell.

**Ilya** · 05-26-2004 06:34 PM

Originally Posted by slacker9876

I sadly admit that I used to work for Tandy...

More than 15 years ago my first laptop was Tandy, and I loved it! As a matter of fact, it still works, though pretty much useless by now...

Radio Shack people usually know electronics well enough, but HDTV and Home Theater is not exactly their domain. I think VOOM should rather get into places that sell big-screen HDTVs...

**slacker9876** · 05-26-2004 06:45 PM

Originally Posted by Ilya

Radio Shack people usually know electronics well enough...

I was there 10 years ago. I have found RS to be useful for odd batteries and not much else

. to stick with facts the last time I needed somehting it was an HD antenna, I didn't know then what i do now either but they said they did not have HDTV antennas ... (now) WHAT!!?! no UHF antennas!?! LOL

**squicken** · 05-26-2004 06:52 PM

There was a Tandy laptop? On the Radio Shack topic, I always felt Incredible Universe had competent sales folks. The store layout was dumb, but at least they had somewhat technical associates. Radio Shack used to be the place you found small, obscure electronic stuff. Now, there are 500 such places on the net. It's too bad. How are the D & D crowd supposed to find summer employment now

**TechCop** · 05-26-2004 08:01 PM

Was that the FD1400 with the 2 floppy drives? One for the program and one for the data? I had one of those, bought it on half-price sale for $400.

Man, we have come a looooonnnng way!

**Ilya** · 05-26-2004 08:54 PM

Originally Posted by TechCop

Was that the FD1400 with the 2 floppy drives? One for the program and one for the data?

That's it! I think they had a version with a hard drive too, but hard drive was more a luxury, than a necessity in those days. It also had 720K RAM if I remember correctly, which was a lot in those old DOS days, compared to IBM PC which came with 64K expandable to 256K(!), so I had plenty of RAM to create a RAM-drive and load my programs on that drive and run them from there at a lightning speed!

Nostalgic memories... sorry for getting off topic.