A Different Eulogy for RadioShack (opens in new tab)

As a kid, I had the pleasure of playing with Deskmate sound and Deskmate music, on a Tandy 286 with no harddrive - only a floppy.

It worked quite well, and I remember taking sample of various thingies and making music.

I also did as the article says - putting the samples on the sonatina because it was quite funny.

That should have been the star feature of the computer. Too bad the sales team didn't focus on that.

(I wonder if someday I'll be able to play back these tracks that I must have saved somewhere?)

EDIT: correction from the article: they seem to have used the mouse controller, not the joystick controller, cf the project manager post on https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.sys.tandy/fq1OO44... and further interesting technical details

The original eulogy is here:

http://www.sbnation.com/2014/11/26/7281129/radioshack-eulogy...

By all accounts they're talking about different eras - this one ending in 1992, and the original starting in 2004. As such, they could probably both be perfectly valid.

I always loved RS when growing up. The problem they solved for me was simple. I needed a cable or other small esoteric part. They had it. I could get it that day and get to work.

The issue is they charged $20 for a cable that you could now buy from Amazon for $1. I know people who would buy the cable from RS for $20, order it on Amazon, wait the 7-9 days for it arrive. Then return the $20 cable to $RS.

Basically, their core purpose disappeared. Amazon has killed them much the same way they killed Border's.

It's always worth remembering that corporations especially are subject to the ship of theseus paradox. Quite simply, the RadioShack of the mid '90s and later was fundamentally a different entity than the RadioShack of the '70s and '80s. One was an organization of intelligent and technologically ambitious folks that was plugged into the heart of the personal computing revolution. The other was a typical soulless, rudderless corporation with no purpose and no ambition other than the bottom line and no intellect or intelligence other than the basest avaricious instincts; an entity that abused its employees and customers to every extent possible in the pursuit of profit. In between, the folks who were part of the first RadioShack left, either retired or moved on, and were replaced with the folks who established the principles of the 2nd, somewhere along the line the culture and ideals of the first company fell by the wayside, never to be picked up again. Too many failed projects here and there, too little listening to what people "on the ground" were telling the leadership (about bad projects and bad policies). When a company becomes a bad place to work the process typically accelerates very rapidly. The most talented folks often find it easiest to find work elsewhere and take the greatest insult from being forced to work on crappy projects and not having their criticisms borne of extensive expertise heard. Once they leave the company then finds it even more difficult to execute on projects, because they lack key talent, and the work environment is now worse for everyone else because the best people have left (working alongside high-caliber individuals is an important goal for most engineers), which drives more people to leave, and again it's typically the folks who have the easiest time of finding work elsewhere. Quickly the talent evaporates out of the company, and things go downhill from there.

It wouldn't be the first time, or even the millionth or billionth, that an organization (company, country, family, estate, etc.) fell from grace in such a fashion, but it's always sad to see it happen.