From: rfd@po.CWRU.Edu (Richard F. Drushel)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Radio Shack lives in the 24th century!
Date: 16 Oct 1992 13:51:53 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Reply-To: rfd@po.CWRU.Edu (Richard F. Drushel)
NNTP-Posting-Host: thor.ins.cwru.edu


In a previous article, chapman@cs.cornell.edu (Richard Chapman) says:

>edwardl@freddyk.uucp (Edward Langenback) writes:
>
>>rfd@po.CWRU.Edu (Richard F. Drushel) writes:
>
>>> 	In the "Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual",
>>> page 120, is *proof* that Radio Shack is still making electronics
>>> in the 24th century!  Look at the picture of the tricorder:  It says:
>>> 
>>> 	TRS80 TRICORDER VII
>>> 
>>> Your humble TRASH-80 computer has evolved into a tricorder :) :)
>>> 
>> 
>>  ye gods, Tricorders made by 'Rat-Shaft'?!?!  it's a wonder they work at 
>>all !
>
>Well that does it; I've read all the Radio Shack flames I can stand
>without replying. Radio Shack is a national resource, and one that you
>should do all you can to keep in business! If you haven't noticed,
>there aren't that many places left that you can go in this country and
>buy a resistor or capacitor or transistor, off the shelf, without
>special ordering, within 5 miles of home? 
>
>I'm not going to defend their consumer electronics, but where else is
>the average guy gonna go when he needs parts after 5:00PM? To the
>'Shack at the mall, or nowhere.  Sure, they don't stock _enough_
>parts, the salespeople are morons, etc, but anywhere in America
>outside the big cities, Radio Shack is the only place you can go for
>electronic parts without mail ordering (ever tried to mail order "that
>little connector, you know, between a blah and a blah" over the phone
>without the exact designation -- at the shack you can look on the wall
>for something that'll do the job).

	Since I started this thread, I feel obligated to respond...
*IN NO WAY* am I flaming Radio Shack.  As a hobbyist and experimenter,
I too appreciate the convenience of buying hardware cheaply off the
shelf without $20 mail-order minimums.  And as I see the yearly
decline in the amount of hardware that Radio Shacks carry, I
have even complained that they might as well just change the name
to Tandy Consumer Electronics and have done with it.

	Also, you guys seem to have missed the last line of my
original post, in which I *SPECIFICALLY* state that the picture
shows TR five-80 not TR ess-80, but that the print was so small
you had to look very carefully to see the five.  The whole point
of my post was that some Trek staffer had a sense of humor, hiding
an apparent reference to an old computer on the tricorder.  Given
all the other throwaway gags described in the TNG Tech. Manual
(such as Sickbay readouts for "Medical Insurance Remaining"), such
a reference to the TRS-80 is not surprising.

	So *PLEASE* stop with the flaming E-mails which say "Idiot
it's a five not an ess!" and "How dare you knock Radio Shack?!"
-- 
Rich Drushel ** rfd@po.CWRU.edu *** Biology Ph.D. Student ** Cleveland FreeNet
Co-Sysop, Coleco ADAM Forum ******* EOS-5 / EOS-7 / OS-7 / T-DOS / soon EOS-8!
"Solda pung apfashat ro des-marno, / Marn ladir o armag noth yeni arno. / Hell
miryat it, / Jambo iat it, / Os lasse wei ticip kati baldo." / Old Ennish poem