In message , at 00:47:48 on Mon, 25
Jun 2018, Adrian Caspersz remarked:
On 24/06/18 14:30, Roland Perry wrote:

You could argue those dominoes began to fall in 1994.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maplin...ition_by_Salti
re


Quality of connectors fell then. Products from Altai were made of
cheese quality plastic, and soldered badly.

Some here, I spotted at a car boot sale.

PL259s galore....
https://youtu.be/KFuWZZFGiew

Here's a writeup by someone.

http://www.alanwinstanley.com/alan-winstanleys-
journal/2018/4/27/maplin-electronics-the-long-farewell.html

Got their timeline a bit muddled when talking about Raspberry Pi in the
same paragraph as causes of the 1990's decline in component-level
construction.

But spot-on when saying that once the shops no longer stocked a critical
mass of component-level items, why would the traditional hobbyist want
to go there at all. If you are going to have to get the "difficult"
parts somewhere else, why not get all of them elsewhere.
--
Roland Perry