At least one Radio Shack is upgrading itself with “Fix It Here!”

FixItHere

The Radioshack at Cary/Crossroads has set up a cellphone and tablet repair station in the corner of their store. It’s called “Fix It Here!”.  My eyes nearly popped out at the site of state of the art SMT rework tools right there, with a very sharp guy named Matt who knows how to use them. He’s there and ready to fix your broken glass, failed connectors, etc. The phone number is 919 851 0332.

And this particular Radioshack now has a wall full of Little Bits as well as a scrupulously maintained inventory of the other gadgets and gizmos embedded hobby enthusiasts need. I was encouraged that maybe they will adapt and pull out of their spiral.

(I have no connection to Radioshack, but I’ve been buying stuff mostly here since this store was opened. )

Why Indeed?

At a recent meeting Scott Hall told us about a $4 Cypress ARM system that his work group intends to use with a port of  an ultra-lightweight Linux called uClinux. Coincidentally there was a recent blurb on Slashdot about uClinux on a Motorola 68k and here is the article, the related Youtube page, and one of the subsequent (in my opinion, classic) /. comments about this subject. The Slashdot article is here.

cynical

Short Talks this Monday

This Monday’s meeting will feature short (5-10 minute) talks/demos aimed at giving us ideas for future, in depth treatments as well as things to chat about during the latter portion of the meeting. If you have something you think would be interesting and can bring *the nub of it* to convey with 1-2 slides or demo gear and a few minutes, please expect to take part in this. If we can queue up/aggregate slide files or come up with other tricks to avoid the A/V equipment being a bottleneck that would be good. Send a line or two to the email list or comments here so the meeting details can be updated.