Dick Smith is no more

I'm not sure what purpose DS serves these days. May as well go to Retravison or Hardly's. I'm sure DS (and probably Tandy as well) are in their final years of existence.

Tandy was already useless over 10 years ago. They have been owned by DSE for a while now, so it isn't hard to figure out what their purpose is...

Regards,

Ross..

Do they still sell single resistors in shrink wrapped packaging?

Sylvia.

what he still means low life is that they sell more consumer crap , radios, toys , phones etc.... now than electronic components , then again you wouldnt know cause you dont go into electronics stores cause you dont do electronics.

ha, ha, classic !!!!!!!

please stop , this is getting REAL funny !!

ha he ha !!!

Rubarb, the man was just a purveyor of cheap crap from overseas right from the start.

** Not right from the start - in the first few years, DSE bought a lot of Aussie made components, put them into kits and sold many other Aussie made items plus some foreign made stuff bought from local Aussie importers.

Then the business nearly went broke and the saviour was to direct import lots of components and stuff from Asia.

The CB radio craze ( Dick was part responsible for getting the law changed ) was a major earner in the mid to late 70s and that put DSE on the path to success.

.... Phil

What components are made in Australia? True, quite a few decades ago some stuff (speakers, transformers etc) were made here in Australia by Rola, Plessey, AR etc, but that was yonks back. AFAIK semiconductors were probably never manufactured here, with most components sourced for OS.

Dick Smith popularised DIY electronics nationally by making the components accessible and affordable to most hobbyists. Yes, in some cities, smaller companies did the same like Stan Willis (Willis Trading Company), Atkins-Carlyle and a number of others here in Perth WA. It wasn't until later that Kitsets Australia appeared that along with Dick Smith supported the local electronics magazines of Electronics Australia and ETI in making fully worked kits of their projects widely available to the home constructor.

It wasn't until years later (probably when Woollies took over) that the stores undertook a change to WIMHO is "junk electronics". But tricky Dick wasn't the only one. A quick stroll around any Jaycar store and you've easily be forgiven for thinking you were in Toys 'r' us. :P

Must be why that used to have that coupon "Sorry Dick, it doesn't work", in which case you needed to take it to a dicksmith ...

Semiconductors were made here, at AWA Microelectronics.

Capacitors also made here and probably resistors. We even made television sets.

ick

or

were

ck.

Relays, Transformers (ferguson), pots, dial lamps - pretty much everything.

Wasn't that a case of bowing to the inevitable?

"Swanny"

** A whole range of Silicon bipolar transistors were made in SA by Fairchild in the early 70s - most were numbered AYxxxx but also some 2Nxxxx types. There was a kit of them sold specially to make the Playmaster 136 amplifier.

Earlier even were the Anodeon ones ( numbered ATxxx ) mostly TO72 pack RF and audio types.

Almost every kind of passive component for radio, TV and audio was made ere - plus a huge range of TV and radio valves up to the late 1970s.

..... Phil

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Selling packs of minimum 5 resistors somehow makes them "useless for components" ?!!

"Useless for components" is don't list them, seldom have what you want in stock. What most people do if they want a resistor is get 5 or 10 and put the rest in their component drawer/s for next time. Unless the huge cost outlay i stoo steep for you...

geoff.

If memory serves me correctly, lack of stock variety was always Tandy's biggest problem. You could get some basic value resistors, some caps, maybe half a dozen

4000/7400 series chips if you wree lucky, a jiffy box and some LED's, and a toggle switch or two for instance, but that was pretty much the extent of their component stock 20-25 years ago.

For the average hobbyist I can remember it was, expecially when I was a kid. If you had to buy a whole range of resistors or parts to finish a project, Tandy was the most idiotic place to shop. Last time I shopped there for components was closer to 25 years ago.

Dave.

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