End of an Era - Frys gone

[tipc]

In this part of the country we've had CompUSA of course, and yes I miss them. For a while there was a store, not many, called Computer City iirc, owned by Radio Shack iinm, I was amazed to see that Best Buy actually sells mobos, fans, cpu/s, and such, when I took it upon myself to browse. But the absence of dedicated puter outlets is a shame if you asked me. You never know what you could find walking through one of them.

Gone, gone, gone. All of them gone. Could they ever come back? People are becoming so sedentary they'd rather just turn on the computer and order something. How boring (admittedly I do a fair bit of it, no other options).

 

[Unknown_K]

The do it yourself computer assembler and general parts replacement crowd is very small compared to the if it breaks or acts weird head to walmart and buy a new computer. Computers are so much cheaper now then 20 years ago, makes me wonder how repair shops stay open.

Last time I went into Bestbuy it was like going to Mars for me (its been a long time). I don't recall seeing much in computer parts there, maybe their website is more stocked then the stores.

Its is easier to buy stuff on ebay then to go to the local store and snag it for 3x the price (if they even have it in stock). If local stores actually had a ton of stuff you could actually browse people might start going back outside. Younger people stay inside so much that fewer of them are even bothering to get a drivers permit let alone a car these days.

While I don't miss most of the big box stores I do miss the small local E-waste recyclers that would let me climb around and buy their junk before it got made into iPhones. Even if you didn't find something you wanted eat time the hunt was fun and you got out of the house. I can't even say I miss Radioshack since I barely went there before it closed.

 

[VERAULT]

I miss the radioshack from the 80s. I really liked thier RC stuff. Back then is was pretty good. I couldnt afford the high end stuff but it was leagues better than the crap they were selling in the 90s and later.

And you speaketh the truth about young people not learning to drive or leave the house. Going to be a huge population of people. In thier 30s living with mom And dad.

 

[charnitz]

For those of you waxing nostalgic about the stores like Fry's, CompUSA, Computer City, and Radio Shack in the 80's and later, in terms of actual availability of items, how well have the the Digikeys, Mousers, and Neweggs/Amazons replaced that? Is the available inventory much larger now? How do overall prices, when shipping is included, compare to the prices with retail markup back then? Or was being able get an item in the time it took to drive to the store and and back so important that it overrides price and inventory considerations, assuming those are both better now?

 

[Shadow Lord]

For those of you waxing nostalgic about the stores like Fry's, CompUSA, Computer City, and Radio Shack in the 80's and later, in terms of actual availability of items, how well have the the Digikeys, Mousers, and Neweggs/Amazons replaced that? Is the available inventory much larger now? How do overall prices, when shipping is included, compare to the prices with retail markup back then? Or was being able get an item in the time it took to drive to the store and and back so important that it overrides price and inventory considerations, assuming those are both better now?

Well currently Mouser is sucking an Egg on all fronts for me... Ordered a few components two weeks ago w/ two day shipping. They were finally shipped today. Mouser supposedly upgraded to next day so lets see if they actually will arrive tomorrow... No mail order store is ever going to replace the convenience of walking in, holding boxes/items in your hand for comparison, paying and coming home. However, as far as selection goes Mouser and Digikey have more selection of components then any retail store ever did. Add in eBay for older/obsolete parts and you can just about get any component you need delivered to you (sometimes from China in 2-3 months but it will get here).

I am not sure about computer component/parts (i.e. video cards, CPUs, etc.) I haven't looked in a while. When I used to buy things like that I used to hit the price search engines like pricewatch.com. Are they still around?

 

[Unknown_K]

For those of you waxing nostalgic about the stores like Fry's, CompUSA, Computer City, and Radio Shack in the 80's and later, in terms of actual availability of items, how well have the the Digikeys, Mousers, and Neweggs/Amazons replaced that? Is the available inventory much larger now? How do overall prices, when shipping is included, compare to the prices with retail markup back then? Or was being able get an item in the time it took to drive to the store and and back so important that it overrides price and inventory considerations, assuming those are both better now?

Availability isn't the point. Back before the internet you found out about new items coming out from watching a tech TV show, reading computer magazines, or mostly just stumbling into it at the local store. Stuff came in retail boxes with driver disk, manual, and any cables needed to hook it up. These days you buy a HD it is mostly just a drive chucked into a box and mailed to you. If you are missing a cable you have to get one from ebay or pay 10x the price at a local store that has nothing else of interest to browse while you are there.

These days you know what you want before you get the your wallet out because you are bombarded about new items at every tech website and forum you go to. All the specs , pictures, in depth design details, and benchmarks are out BEFORE you can actually buy it anyway.

Prices for tech gear has dropped but so has the quality and mostly the variety. You had a lot more choices on computer design now then you did 20 years ago because there were so many companies making their own machines. You also had options on what sound card or video card to get compared to everything built in today with ATI or Nvidia as the only options for GPU.

 

[Trixter]

Well it was nice to have a place you could drive to if you needed something NOW! But that has become a thing of the past it seems. Damn shame.

I am thankful I live 25 minutes away from a Microcenter. I needed a DP-to-miniDP cable, and was there and back in 50 minutes.

 

[creepingnet]

Availability isn't the point. Back before the internet you found out about new items coming out from watching a tech TV show, reading computer magazines, or mostly just stumbling into it at the local store. Stuff came in retail boxes with driver disk, manual, and any cables needed to hook it up. These days you buy a HD it is mostly just a drive chucked into a box and mailed to you. If you are missing a cable you have to get one from ebay or pay 10x the price at a local store that has nothing else of interest to browse while you are there.

These days you know what you want before you get the your wallet out because you are bombarded about new items at every tech website and forum you go to. All the specs , pictures, in depth design details, and benchmarks are out BEFORE you can actually buy it anyway.

Prices for tech gear has dropped but so has the quality and mostly the variety. You had a lot more choices on computer design now then you did 20 years ago because there were so many companies making their own machines. You also had options on what sound card or video card to get compared to everything built in today with ATI or Nvidia as the only options for GPU.

Availability was not at all a point. I was just getting started in guitar electronics and vintage computers back in those days before I had internet, and finding what you needed was a real pain in the rear, especially if you lived in a small town in the middle of nowhere like I did. You had to take whatever you could get and get creative with it. I did a lot of crazy, stupid, and "this should not work but it does" type things early on because I could not find xx part anywhere without a 2 day walk to an adjacent town with no guarantee of finding it. If you were really desparate, you could get a mail order catalog, but that took a long time because then you had to fill out a form, hope the parts were not backordered, send the form via snail mail with a money order, then wait for it to get shipped with no tracking number, sometimes waiting over a month for it to arrive.

Today, all I have to do is do an internet search, and then hunt around for it across reliable sources and hope it's even got a page for it. Mostly older/obscure stuff is still a pain in the rear, but at least now I don't have something as common as a LM386 op amp chip or a 250K Audio taper volume pot for a STratocaster leading to a 1 month wait for parts in the mail with no idea on when they are going to arrive.

I agree on price and quality. Even Enterprise stuff is unreliable. I might order 30 machines and have at least 4-5 that have some kind of issue right out of the box. A lot of it I blame on firmware updates because it seems since they have become more frequent and more of a regular part of maintenance more problems have turned up in modern hardware due to poor, quickly put-out programming.

 

[tipc]

Don't rule out thrift stores for older gear and sometimes even components. I stopped at one today and this particular one was depressing. Xbox 360 w/controllers 150$. HP Pavilion 6623, 500mhz K6, 40$. Wot r u kidding me???

 

[charnitz]

Mouser supposedly upgraded to next day so lets see if they actually will arrive tomorrow... No mail order store is ever going to replace the convenience of walking in, holding boxes/items in your hand for comparison, paying and coming home.

Did they arrive? Was it common to be able to open the boxes and check out the items before purchase at Fry's and such? Or was it really just the box you could get a handle on before you bought it?

Availability isn't the point. Back before the internet you found out about new items coming out from watching a tech TV show
...
Prices for tech gear has dropped but so has the quality and mostly the variety. You had a lot more choices on computer design now then you did 20 years ago because there were so many companies making their own machines. You also had options on what sound card or video card to get compared to everything built in today with ATI or Nvidia as the only options for GPU.

There were tech TV shows? That's an interesting point about quality drop and having only two options for GPU. Was there a time when there were many more GPU companies selling performance-equivalent cards? Also, you say that prices have dropped, but is that really true of video cards today when you consider how much it costs for NVIDIA new releases?

I did a lot of crazy, stupid, and "this should not work but it does" type things early on because I could not find xx part anywhere without a 2 day walk to an adjacent town with no guarantee of finding it. If you were really desparate, you could get a mail order catalog, but that took a long time because then you had to fill out a form, hope the parts were not backordered, send the form via snail mail with a money order, then wait for it to get shipped with no tracking number, sometimes waiting over a month for it to arrive.
...
I agree on price and quality. Even Enterprise stuff is unreliable. I might order 30 machines and have at least 4-5 that have some kind of issue right out of the box. A lot of it I blame on firmware updates because it seems since they have become more frequent and more of a regular part of maintenance more problems have turned up in modern hardware due to poor, quickly put-out programming.

That's some dedication to walk 2 days to the next town for the hobby! With the mail order catalogs, did you really have to wait, or could you call your order in? I mean, if you could call your order in, was that really functionally different than online ordering today, assuming a good catalog?

I've noticed professional DOS programs seem like they have very few bugs compared to the functionality they offered in the footprint they used, relative to modern software. Did easy updates destroy both firm and soft -ware quality?

 

[VERAULT]

Thrift stores seem like a "regional" thing. Here in New England they suck. Fine for clothes and maybe some cookware. Electronics, boxes games/movies, small items; well they must get thrown out or sent somewhere else. All the ones around here have squat. I wonder if the workers have a racket. Been thrifting in other parts of the country and its much better. Except Near Nashville TN. That place had nothing in all 6 of the thrift stores I visited. Craigslist was barren in the area too.

 

[creepingnet]

I'd never really look to a Fry's for "vintage" kit. I mostly saw them as a source for components. What kind of sucks is when I moved to Reno in 2018, our "Sandy's" was already dead (it was like a local version of Fry's) so Fry's was the only place even remotely close that had components that I did not have to mail order. I also found a "Sage" electronics in the industrial district but they too were already dead by the time I got there.

Thrift stores seem like a "regional" thing. Here in New England they suck. Fine for clothes and maybe some cookware. Electronics, boxes games/movies, small items; well they must get thrown out or sent somewhere else. All the ones around here have squat. I wonder if the workers have a racket. Been thrifting in other parts of the country and its much better. Except Near Nashville TN. That place had nothing in all 6 of the thrift stores I visited. Craigslist was barren in the area too.

Honestly, the places I'm having luck with are older computer shops that have staff who are not exactly in touch with each other. For example, I got an IBM Model "M" at Nu2u Computers in Reno for $4.00 after the manager asked $40 for it a few months before, because the young kid at the desk said "were not supposed to have oooold stuff like that out on the shelves". I've been back 2-3 times since and not found anything vintage, well, except the copy of Under a Killing Moon I bought for $3.

Another place was PC Service CEnter in Sparks. I went in the other morning to check them out for things I'd normally go to Fry's for on the PC-side of things, and lo and behold, got 2 CRT's because a member of their staff did not know they could not take those in.

Found a place in Redmond called "Computer Surplus" - I got my NEC MultiSync II monitor there for free because it was on top of the recycle pile. I gave them my number for any other CRT's that came in, never got a call. Oddly they had a 486 tower right by the door they would not sell because it was "the first computer they ever built". Was a great place to get IDE drives though. I still have 3 of the 80GB drives I bought from them.

But in Seattle we DID have a cool pair of stores - RE-PC, and the one in Tukwila was awesome. They were literally catering to our types there with an entire section dedicated to vintage IBM Compatible hardware including Xt, 286, 386, 486 boards. Before the pandemic I always thought this would be a good idea for a cool local business with a strong online presense would be a computer recycler that focuses on re-homing these devices rather than shredding them down to raw materials if they work or can be assembled into a working machine.