Radio Shack (a.k.a. Radio Shaft, a.k.a. Chicken Shack) sucks now far more than they ever have in the past. They have still not given up carrying all parts, but what's left is little more than false promise. Less than two years ago they'd order anything you wanted and have it shipped to your house, even in-store orders. They also carried a decent selection of standard logic in through-hole parts. Now nearly all logic has been eliminated, as well as a number of other useful parts.
In the past they were rightly reviled for the ignorance of their staff, for relabelling standard parts as RS-xxxx (e.g. a CDP4050 as an RS4050), and for not updating their catalog of parts regularly. Now they can be reviled even more for eviscerating their non-consumer product line--at a time when the electronics hobby is on a major upswing. Their market research is as contrary as contrary comes.
As to Jameco, I've done business with them for about thirty years now and I've always liked them (when Radio Shack carried Jameco's "Jim-Pak" products it went a long way toward making even Radio Shack a far better store, as a matter of fact.) They used to carry a wide range of Commodore-specific parts. My spare VIC, VIC-II, and SID chips that are in my parts drawers now were purchased from them when they were closing out those parts.
The parts they have now are far fewer than in the day, but it's great that they still carry something. However, the parts they carry now are not Commodore-specific (as 6502dude noted.) I think it's great that they still carry anything at all of this sort. It would not be difficult for them to make an economic case for dropping these products out of their line entirely, and going entirely into PC products (as many another vendor has done.)
A good reason for them not labelling the chips as Commodore chips is that they're used for far more than Commodore products. Apple and Atari systems use them, as well as a lot of other devices, and then there are those of us who still turn out an occasional homebrew system. Catalogs are marketing, and good marketing for limited demand items like these would be to seek to reach as wide an audience as possible.
So, my take on it is that I'm overjoyed that these chips are still readily available from retail sources, they're inexpensive, and that the retail source is a company I do a good amount of business with for these and other parts.
If you want to find something to gripe about,
, try looking for parts for the COSMAC Elf! The video chip is unobtainium, the original hex displays cost US$30+
per digit, and so on.
The Elf video chip situation is so bad that one fellow came up with a hardware emulator to replace it. Check it out here:
http://www.sparetimegizmos.com/
-Mark G.
) I signed up at Jameco to receive a
