[GreenKeys] Radio Shack Parts

[Don Robert House]

Remember that Radio Shack was formerly Allied Radio.  Allied's retail  
stores and mail order division went out of business due to Japanese  
imported electronics.
The mother company that bought the retail business and stores from  
Allied was Tandy Corporation.  The stores were converted. Most of  
Tandy's experience was selling of hobby supplies for leather-working.

As the years have gone by the Radio Shack stores have had a harder and  
harder time making a profit.  The people who run the stores make a  
very little salary.  I had a friend that worked at two different  
stores.  He made just enough money to pay for his lunch and his  
gasoline to get to work.  The only time he made a little extra was if  
he sold a cellular phone contract.

Retail stores are expensive. They have lots of overhead.  Most of us  
purchase our needs over the world wide web directly from people who  
have very little overhead.  In some cases the items we buy are shipped  
directly from China or elsewhere even though the seller shows a USA  
address.

I have found MOUSER to be a very reliable source of parts.  In most  
cases there is either no minimum or a very small minimum order  
requirement.  No so with DIGI-KEY.  Also quality parts can be obtained  
from JAMECO Electronics.  All of these companies do most of their  
business on-line.

When I worked for Pulse / Excelsus full time, Radio Shack wanted to  
stock our DSL Filters.  We could not make them for what they were  
willing to pay at any quantity and still meet the ANSI requirements.   
They get cheap copies of our filters from China instead.  The copies  
have all kinds of cost savings in them, one example is the gold  
plating on the contacts. FCC Part 68 requires 50 micro-inches of  
gold.  The Chinese copies have 3 micro-inches of gold plating.  Suttle  
also uses Chinese copies.  International patents are hard to enforce.   
If you have DSL service with distributed filters make sure they are  
Excelsus Z-Blocker Filters,  they are the best in the world.  There  
are over 30 million happy customers out there and we still do tech  
support with two and a half people.  I am that half person.  I will be  
doing support next week when one of the other guys is out of town and  
the other guy who is the product manager is getting married.

Enough for now.

Old Don
K9TTY
tracer of lost circuits