Whatever happened to Olson Electronics?

[gregz]

Kind of surprised they went bankrupt. They were once very popular.
Guess it's a sign of the times, as I said, now a days it's all
imported cheap throwaway junk, so no one bothers to build stuff or for
that matter even repair most stuff.

I still like doing this stuff, but it's hard to find parts anymore, at
least locally. Radio Shack is about all there is, and they have
little anymore for parts. Seems they're mostly about cellphones now.
Seems they now devote a 4x8 foot piece of floor space for all their
components, all in little bins. Whenever I walk into a Radio Shack
these days, I'm asked "would you like to purchase a _____ cellphone
plan". When I say, "No, I just need a capacitor". they all walk away
from me. (probably because they dont know what a capacitor it).

I'll have to look up Fair Radio. I recall the name.
Thanks

When I lived in Barstow ca., I used to travel all over sometimes stopping
at several radio shacks, riverside surplus, Mac's electronics in san
bernadino, Fontana. There was a place in riverside that sold ham stuff, was
closed down, but still had the front sign. Forget the name. I had mail
ordered a vfo to Pittsburgh from this place in the 60's.

Just before my radio shack closed down, they had remolded to what I thought
was excellent floor displays, and were really at their peak for looking at
products. I was sad. Bought a bunch of stuff cheap before they closed.

Greg

 

[gregz]

When I lived in Barstow ca., I used to travel all over sometimes stopping
at several radio shacks, riverside surplus, Mac's electronics in san
bernadino, Fontana. There was a place in riverside that sold ham stuff, was
closed down, but still had the front sign. Forget the name. I had mail
ordered a vfo to Pittsburgh from this place in the 60's.

Just before my radio shack closed down, they had remolded to what I thought
was excellent floor displays, and were really at their peak for looking at
products. I was sad. Bought a bunch of stuff cheap before they closed.

Greg

I see Mac's is still in business. Was a Lafayette associate store. Bought
my first calculator there in 1974.

Greg

 

[SMS]

<http://images.goantiques.com/dbimages3/IHB2564/IHB2564S_3651.jpg>

I was driving down 101 in Northern California and there was a billboard
for chain of tire stores that was promoting their special of 'free beef
with the purchase of four tires' (they've been doing this for 48 years).
I thought of Olson's free pearls. A freebie totally unrelated to the
item being sold. But maybe Olson was giving the guys an excuse--"honey,
I'm going out to buy you some pearls."

 

[Cydrome Leader]

Back in the mid-70s, when I was in high school, I signed up for
Motorola's update program. It cost about $20 per annum iirc, and for
that they'd ship you an entire box of databooks two or three times a
year. I still remember going through stuff like MOS memory and weird
bipolar stuff. Even though 70% of the databooks got tossed, it made me
feel like a real guy instead of a kid with an unusual hobby. Good medicine.

I still prefer printed books over 400 page PDFs anyday.

 

[Cydrome Leader]

Interesting. From here that link takes me to DIY Electronics, who make
the KitsRUs kits. Might want to check your DNS!

Yes, a lot of the kits up above are "LED toys" but that's fine. They're
aimed at neophytes, with non-critical components and simple construction
that "does something." The intent is to get an early success that can be
built upon.

There have always been useles LED toys- just now they come in more than
red, and used transistors not microcontrollers.

In grade school we made line following robot kits which were pretty
fun as you assembled the board and then built the mechanical parts and
spent 10 times the assembly time adjusting it. There was a knock off
"clapper" kit with no case that ran off line voltage too. I used mine for
many years with just a pushbutton switch from a VCR front panel or
something like that in place of the microphone. They had all sorts of
great stuff like radio transmitters.

All the datasheets from the kit maker were green. The company may have
been Greymark or Graymark.

Oddly, when I went to radio shack last week, they had piles of some sorts
of kits again. Electronic kits must be a rage these days. I did not see
any of those graph paper mini engineers' notebooks from Forest Mims
though. They had fresh looking bottles of PCB etchant too, somethign I've
not seen in a while.