old radio shack catalogs

[Mr Tony]

I figured the FTA guys would like this

found a site that has whole copies of the old radio shack catalogs for easy flip through

http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/catalog_directory.html

 

[Fizbi]

That is friggn COOL! :up:up

Thanks for sharing! Now I'm scratching my head trying to recall the first time I walked into a RS store.

 

[Mr Tony]

first time I walked into a Rat Shack...84 or 85 when I was a kid. That is when the local one was in the mall

I remember buying in late 88/early 89 a 300ohm to a 75ohm vhf/300ohm UHF TV converter. Needed to hook an antenna to the VCR I got and all I had was rabbit ears. Radio SHack had moved to a different spot that is now a pawn shop. They moved back to the mall in 91 or so and are still there (even though the mall is a shell of itself)

 

[Fizbi]

My first visit to RS was late 60s, early 70s. They had a program called free battery a month club. You got a card that got punched or marked and you could pick out any battery. I always grabbed a 9V radio battery for my pocket transistor radio.

My first electronic project (at the ripe age of 16) was to build an amplifier using a LM741 OP amp to detect the pulses from your arm muscles and amplify it to a speaker. After that I was forever hooked into electronics. Those were the days!

 

[freezy]

I worked at one for 3yr.s at the now defunct Cedarvale Shopping Center.


Engr.s from Cray and Control Data were in and out of there every day





The best project was the high voltage generator/stun gun/home tenz-unit...lol

 

[Bill_KY]

Iceberg, this is great, Thanks!

 

[Mr Tony]

My first visit to RS was late 60s, early 70s. They had a program called free battery a month club. You got a card that got punched or marked and you could pick out any battery. I always grabbed a 9V radio battery for my pocket transistor radio.

yep I remember that. It was either the red or green batteries.

 

[Mr Tony]

I worked at one for 3yr.s at the now defunct Cedarvale Shopping Center.

That mall was in Eagan, correct? Trying to figure out where that was? I know of the one off Cedar & Cliff and the one in Eagan Town Center (helped open that one)

I worked for 4 years at Rat Shack...mainly Shakopee (Canterbury Park was a huge customer) but dang I worked in most of them south of the river...Burnsville, Apple Valley, both Eagan, Eden Prairie, both in Mall of America, the one on 76th and Lyndale, Cottage Grove. Ran the one in Sibley Plaza in St Paul for a year before they closed it down.

We had a guy who at the time owned the bus service that ran you from your location to Mystic come in all the time. You'd follow him like a dog because he would spend $1500-2 grand a time and always wrote a check and you knew it was good

ahhh memories...when Radio Shack was for the "geek" in all of us.

 

[freezy]

ahhhhh(fondly reminiscent)...All the cougars we could have owned if we would have gone and connected all those VCRs and programmed them to record Dynasty.


There is another at Diffley and Cedar. The guy I used to work for moved there. They had a TV repair shop in back. That's where I got started in this stuff.

I even worked for Tandy for a year.

 

[Mr Tony]

[/I]There is another at Diffley and Cedar.

Thats the one I'm thinking of...I think...I thought it was on Cliff Rd right by Cedar?

 

[freezy]

Yep ..it used to be a Big A Auto Parts before they moved there.

That little old grey hair guy with the rough skin and the big nose was a decorated Marine US Consulate guard.

Don't know if he's still there. He would be about 65.

 

[Tron]

Great find Iceberg, thanks! I still have a couple of the catalogs sitting around. Back in the day, I used to look forward to the new catalog every year.

 

[Blindowl1234]

Ice, Thanks for the great link. I printed out a few pages from the 74 catalog with items I still have. I think they screwed themselves when they quit selling decent products and dropped the catalog. The Science Fair stuff and Pbox kits were two of my favorites. I remember as a kid a vertical tube went out, on our color Tv console. I told dad we could go to the Shack and get one. My folks kept suggesting they needed to call the repairman. Well we went to the Shack and got the tube anyway and the Tv was fixed for about $3.00. Ah the good ole days.....Blind

 

[skysurfer]

That is friggn COOL! :up:up

Thanks for sharing! Now I'm scratching my head trying to recall the first time I walked into a RS store.

How about the last time you walked into one?

It's been over 2 years for me, because they've discontinued -- or made it a PITA because of special order - a lot of their DIY parts (pots, resistors, caps, diode bridges, etc).

My Sony Trinitron CRT tv went out of service last week - the fix has always been a capacitor. I went to the RS website and they no longer carry that 22uf/250V cap so they lost my potential business last week. Sadly, I had to go elsewhere to get the cap to fix my tv.

First time I went to a radio shack was early 80's when I would go with my dad to get parts to fix stuff at home that needed a replacement component.

 

[guapoharry]

Good one, Iceberg.

Thanks for posting that.

 

[bhelms]

Tks for the link. I still have a lot of catalogs from about 1970 up until they began charging for them on a shelf somewhere. Fun to look back into time that way!

I loaded the site and was watching the animation as they flipped pages. On the second page they're showing my cassette player with speakers for $149.95! I still have that deck (but the speakers are long gone...) That has to be a 1970 catalog!

The Battery of the Month Club lasted many years, into the early 90s IIRC. I still have a stack of blank cards somewhere...

 

[Bill_KY]

Look at the amount of ham radio equipment they used to carry ....in the 1961 catalog pages 79 - 99.

 

[Inno]

So cool!!!
I remember looking through those catalogs as a kid in the 80s until there was almost nothing left of them. I couldn't wait for the new one to come out! I wanted EVERYTHING.

In looking through a few of them I realize how many of those items me or my family owned.

 

[Dishman Dan]

WOW! Things did change a little!

I remember pawing through catalogs beginning around 1970. It was the 1973 catalog that I went to the counter and requested my own copy along with my battery a month card. The batteries back then were like a tan and white with red Radio Shack written across it. The electronic kits were the first big thing for me. I manage to weasel a crystal radio kit while I was with my mom but once home, dad was not impressed. After the aircraft and police radios I moved on to the 10 in 1 kit and then did a few P Box kits. When the 80's hit it was to Radio Shack to add little boxes and switches to enhance my stereo system. The last things I bought were TV antennas which have not lasted too well in big wind storms. I did talk my brother in law into one of their C band systems in the early 90's - it was on sale for $999!

 

[DJ Rob]

Great link! I just spent 2 hours reading most of them

I had the ones from '76 on and had wished I kept them. I too had a battery of the month card and spent what money I had as a kid buying their kits and other parts there.