same thing with Radio Shack

[Mark Kinsler]

https://youtu.be/lchWmrO6mMw?si=t6qnToV0KJJ_OGqf

[Dave Typinski]

Thanks for both of those vids. Sad that they were AI generated, but overall
quite good.
--
Dave


On 4/29/26 00:42, Mark Kinsler wrote:
> https://youtu.be/lchWmrO6mMw?si=t6qnToV0KJJ_OGqf
>
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[Mark Kinsler]

Heathkit and Radio Shack were important to us all, and I still don't understand what killed them off.  There were Lafayette and Allied and Olson Radio (hereabouts) as well.  It really wasn't any sort of "betrayal," and it seems to have been simultaneous with the popularity of little computers.

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--

Mark Kinsler

512 East Mulberry Street
Lancaster, Ohio USA 43130
740-503-1973

[Dave Typinski]

I remember PolyPaks, they always had neat stuff.

Jameco is still with us, still selling pretty much the same components they
always did. And there are plenty of new kids on the block, like Adafruit,
Sparkfun, and a whole slew of robotics -oriented places. And don't forget about
Newegg and Amazon.

Heathkit's demise didn't have one main cause. The video covered the important
factors. The new owners could have pivoted and turned it into another Jameco or
Adafruit, but they didn't have a crystal ball.

I sure miss them. Their manuals remain the best ever published. But, somehow,
I just don't see enough people today buying and building such kits to make a
solely kit-oriented company viable.

You can't go home again.
--
Dave

On 4/30/26 15:25, Mark Kinsler wrote:
> Heathkit and Radio Shack were important to us all, and I still don't
> understand what killed them off. There were Lafayette and Allied and Olson
> Radio (hereabouts) as well. It really wasn't any sort of "betrayal," and it
> seems to have been simultaneous with the popularity of little computers.
>
> On Wed, Apr 29, 2026 at 10:46 PM Dave Typinski <dav...@typnet.net
> <mailto:dav...@typnet.net>> wrote:
>
> Thanks for both of those vids. Sad that they were AI generated, but overall
> quite good.
> --
> Dave
>
>
> On 4/29/26 00:42, Mark Kinsler wrote:
> > https://youtu.be/lchWmrO6mMw?si=t6qnToV0KJJ_OGqf
> >
> > --
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> > <mailto:howthingswor...@googlegroups.com
> <mailto:howthingswork%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com>>.

> > To view this discussion visit
> >
> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/howthingswork/CAOnJ3j0dQO0ZSeT-NXuMUjROMVxC0HzzcXdZWmtPZRFexRS8Ww%40mail.gmail.com
> >
> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/howthingswork/CAOnJ3j0dQO0ZSeT-NXuMUjROMVxC0HzzcXdZWmtPZRFexRS8Ww%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.
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>
> --
> Mark Kinsler
> 512 East Mulberry Street
> Lancaster, Ohio USA 43130
> 740-503-1973
>

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[Paul Koning]

> On Apr 30, 2026, at 4:35 PM, Dave Typinski <dav...@typnet.net> wrote:
>
> I remember PolyPaks, they always had neat stuff.

Same here.

> Jameco is still with us, still selling pretty much the same components they always did. And there are plenty of new kids on the block, like Adafruit, Sparkfun, and a whole slew of robotics -oriented places. And don't forget about Newegg and Amazon.

In recent years I've gotten a pile of stuff from Adafruit, an occasional item from Sparkfun, and assorted electronic bits from Amazon (like a box of 6 inch-sized bitmap displays for under $1 each). And my Linux firewall machine came from Newegg, an industrial class machine (no moving parts of any kind).

> Heathkit's demise didn't have one main cause. The video covered the important factors. The new owners could have pivoted and turned it into another Jameco or Adafruit, but they didn't have a crystal ball.

A classic problem for older companies is having an installed base, which makes it easy to think that serving that base, or doing things like it, is the answer. Disruptive change is harder than for new companies.

I like to quote Bill Hewlett, or was it Dave Packard, who supposedly said "we must always cannibalize our own product lines, because if we don't, our competitors will surely do it for us."

> I sure miss them. Their manuals remain the best ever published. But, somehow, I just don't see enough people today buying and building such kits to make a solely kit-oriented company viable.

Probably true. Then again, Adafruit and others like it are essentially that to a significant extent, and there are other companies that offer kits for hams or others. I think one difference is that they tend to be much smaller, and much less novice-friendly. I have a nice single-band ham radio (Morse code) transceiver that fits in a box about 1.5 by 2.5 by 4 inches; it puts out a few hundred mW if I remember right. That came in a kit, with all the parts and basic instructions. But it sure as heck wasn't Heathkit, and it didn't aim to be. The idea was that if you had a basic level of electronics building skill you could build this and make it work. The instructions were clear enough for that audience. But it was only 2 or 3 pages what Heath would have done in two dozen.

One of my best discoveries was that, for things I design myself, I can get everything I need from Digikey. And even though they clearly like to sell things in volume, that's what their primary customer base would do, they are quite happy to sell basically anything they carry in quantity 1. And their prices are quite civilized. Just the other day I ordered some surface mount parts for a new project. I needed a couple of resistors and capacitors, of commonly used values; ended up getting 100 because at that quantity they cost only about a penny each, so why not. 0603 capacitors don't take up much room. :-)

paul

[Bob Reite]

Ah yes Olson. They had a store in Inglewood CA.

On 4/30/26 3:25 PM, Mark Kinsler wrote:
> Heathkit and Radio Shack were important to us all, and I still don't
> understand what killed them off.  There were Lafayette and Allied and
> Olson Radio (hereabouts) as well.  It really wasn't any sort of
> "betrayal," and it seems to have been simultaneous with the popularity
> of little computers.
>
> On Wed, Apr 29, 2026 at 10:46 PM Dave Typinski <dav...@typnet.net
> <mailto:dav...@typnet.net>> wrote:
>
> Thanks for both of those vids.  Sad that they were AI generated, but
> overall
> quite good.
> --
> Dave
>
>
> On 4/29/26 00:42, Mark Kinsler wrote:
> > https://youtu.be/lchWmrO6mMw?si=t6qnToV0KJJ_OGqf
> <https://youtu.be/lchWmrO6mMw?si=t6qnToV0KJJ_OGqf>
> >
> > --
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> > "howthingswork" group.
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> <mailto:howthingswork%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com>>.

> > To view this discussion visit
> >
> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/howthingswork/CAOnJ3j0dQO0ZSeT-NXuMUjROMVxC0HzzcXdZWmtPZRFexRS8Ww%40mail.gmail.com <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/howthingswork/CAOnJ3j0dQO0ZSeT-NXuMUjROMVxC0HzzcXdZWmtPZRFexRS8Ww%40mail.gmail.com>
> >

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>
>
>
> --
> Mark Kinsler
> 512 East Mulberry Street
> Lancaster, Ohio USA 43130
> 740-503-1973
>

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--
Robert D. Reite
Telecentral Electronics, Inc.

[Conrad Sawicz]

I worked for Graymark that made educational kits used in shop classes and vocational training. When PolyPaks started up in 1975 it really effect sales, so Graymark developed it own like of fun electronics kits in a bag to compete. I had just finished by freshman year at UCI, and this was my first exposure to electrical engineering earning money. I never stopped.

https://ka2c.com/graymark/

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