I had a couple including one USB one that I later modified to use to scan regular bar codes.
I pulled up Wikipedia to look up who created them, and apparently he changed his name after they failed. He was also on Curse of Oak Island searching for gold and was involved in ballot shenanigans in the 2020 US presidential election where he was notable for supposedly inventing a machine to find bamboo fibers on ballots.
For those who don’t remember them:
In 2000, they had the bright idea that people would leave these connected to their computers so that advertisers in magazines could put a barcode on the page to go straight to a webpage with info about a product or a product catalog from someone like RadioShack would let you scan it to take you straight to an ordering page. Similar to how QR codes function often today.
The problem was that in 2000 almost nobody had an always on internet connection unless you were lucky, wealthy, or in school. And URLs are really easy to type.
They stopped giving them away in 2001.
The CueCat was also discontinued when it was found to store user details on a public facing portion of their webpage and the company did nothing to fix it except offer a coupon to RadioShack.
It was a horrendously run company which made a problem that solved “typing” for people who wanted to know about a product they have in hand already. CueCat was beyond stupid.
And then QR codes came along… Basically the same thing.
Japan created QR codes in the 90s. What changed was everyone carrying around an internet connected camera.
I think it’s important to note why so many people remember these. Radio Shack was literally giving these away for free, so people scooped them up without any plans to use them for their intended purpose.
There were a ton of DIY projects modifying these to do all sorts of unholy things. It also got featured on Slashdot, which was highly relevant at the time. My personal favorite was the mini-blowtorch
Holy shit, I didn’t realize what a complete nutcase Commander Jovan was. Ironically, the Cuecat was the best thing he ever did.
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I remember being a teenager in the 90’s and going in to see if I could special order a 75pf - 100pf Variable Capacitor. The guy behind the counter just said that he wasn’t going to help me because he knew I was just looking to make a cable descrambler to watch ppv porn. I mean, he wasn’t wrong, but it still hurt.
Oh no, someone is going to harmlessly watch porn. What a dick.
Maybe. It would be hard to tell when the video was scrambled right?
Basically all of us in the 90’s watching scrambled porn.
You could argue that, because he knew what it was most likely to be used for, he had foreknowledge of a crime and would then be knowingly facilitating the commission of that crime. So he may have been trying to err on the side of caution.
Still a jerk.
Why yes, because those capacitors certainly aren’t used in any other way /s
Radio Shack the brand isn’t dead. Remember they filed ch.11 which is the reorganize bankruptcy.
EDIT: Of course, to me, they died when they went whole hog with cell phones and less being able to walk in there and pick up various ICs. So in that sense Radio Shack died long before their bankruptcy.
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The one that was by me still kept a whole section in the back dedicated to electronics components and soldering kits until the bitter end. The rest of the store was crappy RC cars and cell phones, though.
They closed down before I decided that I want to learn to solder and do electronics stuff for fun. Shame, but when I do eventually jump into it, it’s going to take more planning on my part so I have stuff on hand vs. just popping out to the store when I need something.
I had one of these. Bought it on eBay for a fiver to build a ryo 2-factor login on my computer that basically consisted of appending my password w a random value that I then printed as a barcode so that logging in meant typing in my password, then scanning the barcode w the cuecat, then hitting enter.
Hmm, that’s kinda clever. What year was it in?
hell if i know, late enough that they were considered “abandoned” tech by then and you could get them cheap but before i graduated college because this was something I did in the dorms. I had the ps/2 passthrough version rather than the USB native, but I think their manufacturing window was narrow enough that that wouldn’t help pin down a time.
I worked at RS during these glorious days. I only had the PS/2 version.
I was in USA in the mid 80’s, and bought a Radio Shack programmers calculator. I still have it, and it still works. batteries must have lasted for 5+ years, because we moved 5 years ago, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t put new in while living here, and when I found it, the power was still on, and the clock ticking, buttons still working almost 40 years on now! Amazing… 😋
I keep it now as my best souvenir from that trip.
My grandpa had like 3 of these and I never knew what for or why. I guess that explains it!
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Don’t forget to edit this otherwise identical comment with the picture link in the other comment
Yeah, I made this one 1st, but realized that there were probably others who would appreciate the info so I made it a top level comment too.
I still have one somewhere. Still totally useless lol
USB or PS/2 version?
Ps/2 iirc
what is it?
Went and looked it up. Apparently they’re barcode readers. Kind of cute shape! Radioshack is apparently an electronics store found in the USA. Yanks think everyone lives in the US.
I wonder if these predated usb connectors? If it does, they must have had a hell of a time getting them to connect to non-universal ports on the various machines people owned.
It was US based, but there were stores in United States, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. It was owned by Tandy Corporation who made early home computers starting in the late 1970’s and home electronics gear. (They originally started as a leather and craft supplier though)
USB was common by then. You still had to specifically install drivers for each peripheral, though.
I wonder if these predated usb connectors?
You can see the USB-A connector in the picture. The USB standard was established a few years before this, and a lot of peripherals started using it right away, unlike the micro-USB connector, which should have died years ago.
The original ones had a PS/2 port, where you would just insert it in between your keyboard and the computer, and when it scanned it effectively just was entering the keys as though they had been typed out on the keyboard itself. The very end days for this product they introduced a USB version but it’s by far the less common.
It used to be an electronics store, now its just a bankrupt cell phone store.
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