Re: RadioShack was wonderful
They were awesome. You could buy any electronic componentry, including 74LSxxxx chips and some CMOS stuff in single quantities and I REALLY miss that.
I recently needed a 1uF capacitor for my garage door and there is no longer anywhere that sells electronic components by the piece to anyone that walks in.
Fortunately, we have Sky Craft in Orlando, which has an entire supermarket size aisle of capacitors. And another aisle of resistors. They even found a Radio Shack store display with component drawers and set it up for us old fogies. Sky Craft started out as aerospace surplus when the space program would scrap an entire computer for having the wrong color paint or something. That practice has stopped, but they still have unique stuff, like equipment parachutes, cleanroom bunny suits, and weird test equipment.
I got a TRS-80 Model I Level I 4K for Christmas, 1979. I remember arguing with my mother about the $160(?) for a Level II kit, for 16K and enhanced BASIC. She worked on mainframes and 16K was an ungodly amount of memory that you'd never use as a single person. She passed away before I was able to show her my desktop with 32GB of RAM.