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From: paul@unhtel.unh.edu (Paul S. Sawyer)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Allied Radio / Radio Shack
Message-ID: <16707@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 5 Feb 91 18:11:56 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 95, Message 1 of 9


In article <16686@accuvax.nwu.edu> jshelton@ads.com (John L. Shelton)
writes:
X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 93, Message 3 of 10

> [Moderator's Note: (Allied Radio was Radio Shack's name thirty years
> ago for you young'uns reading this.)...

> Not true.

> Radio Shack was formed in 1920 (approx) in Boston, MA, and for years
> had the one store on Commonwealth Ave.  They branched out into mail
> order over the years.  In the 60's, Radio Shack was bought by the
> Tandy Corporation, which at the time was doing mostly leather and
> craft stuff.  Eventually, RS became the large portion of Tandy, and I
> believe the craft business is almost completely gone.
 
I seem to remember when the ONE store they had was downtown, on
Washington Street, and had just about everything.  I think Comm Ave
was when they started to expand, become a serious commercial jobber,
etc.  Then Tandy made them into the McDonald's of electronics....

>[Moderator's Note: ...
>         Say! Speaking of Heathkit ... what are *they* doing these
>days? Are they still around?  My first terminal was a Zenith Z-19
>which I built from a Heathkit in 1980, meaning it was actually an H-19
>instead.  The last I heard, they closed the Benton Harbor facility.  PAT]

I think I have you beat on this one, Pat, I built an H-9 (yes, NINE)
around 1977.  It was upper case only on transmit, and RECEIVED lower
case as garbage, so I had to add a gate to shift that bit on only
those characters ... I have an H-89 here in working condition, which
is really an H-19 with a Z-80 computer and floppy disk in it.  There
were still two Heath stores in the Boston area as of a few years ago,
but they had a lot more of a consumer electronics/computer store feel
to them ... sigh....


Paul S. Sawyer             {uunet,attmail}!unhtel!paul    paul@unhtel.unh.edu
UNH CIS - - Telecommunications and Network Services      VOX: +1 603 862 3262
Durham, New Hampshire  03824-3523                        FAX: +1 603 862 2030


[Moderator's Note: The H-19 (Z-19) had a hollow space on the right
side of the monitor where the disk drive would fit if you were
converting it to a 89. Then inside the unit right in front of the logic
board there was a place to install the board for the 89 if desired. The
coversion was not real hard, but I did not bother. What I did do with
the H-19 was install a 'Graphics Plus' board in there instead which
improved the terminal's performance greatly and made it a very smart
terminal.  PAT]