In Memoriam: Radio Shack

[notbobsmith]

So Radio Shack just filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. I know that in recent years Radio Shack has been something of a punchline. They even lampooned themselves in an ‘80s themed ad during the Super Bowl last year. The thing that I found funny about the ad was that Radio Shack was awesome in the ‘80s! My family bought a lot of stuff from them over the years. Radios, stereos, calculators, and our first two computers. The first was a TRS-80, which honestly I never got into that much. But then we got a Tandy 1000. 8088 processor. 128k RAM (later upgraded to 384). Dual 5.25” floppy drives (great for Sierra games. Game disk in A:, save disk in B:). MS-DOS 2.11. And the games. Starflight, Carmen Sandiego, F-15 Strike Eagle, and my first Sierra title, Police Quest. All in beautiful 16 colors and glorious 3-voice sound (which I understand was copied from the PCjr, but was more popular on the Tandy). I can’t imagine listening to a Sierra AGI game any other way. Fortunately, DOSBox does a convincing job of emulating Tandy sound. And the staff actually knew what they were doing! We bought Printshop from Broderbund from them and couldn’t make a backup copy of the disk (didn’t really understand copy protection at the time). We took it back to the store and someone there made a copy of the disk for us. I guess meant that he had an option board in the back room which isn't exactly a standard piece of hardware.

I know companies can still come back from Chapter 11, but either way I suppose it doesn’t matter. The Radio Shack I remember hasn’t existed for a very long time. I just thought I’d post this to share some memories and recognize their contribution to early PC gaming.

[Tawmis]

I used to go to the Radio Shack all the time back in the 80's. There was one very close to our house. I am more than certain more than a few Sierra games were purchased there (I know that's where I got Black Cauldron, the actual first game I ever bought for myself, for my Tandy 1000 SX I had - having already been familiar with Sierra by this time through KQ1 and LSL1).

Sadly, somewhere in one of my many moves, I have misplaced my copy of Black Cauldron. So I need to buy that again some day...