111–120 of 316 posts
Every Fry's I have been to in the last decade has felt like the store was already in the process of going out of business. That said, I will miss the place. Sometimes you just need a piece of electronics today and Fry's had a much wider selection than stores like Best Buy.
Even before a lot of locations were Fry’s, they were Incredible Universe, a big-box-store concept from Tandy who also owned Radio Shack https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incredible_Universe
I’m not surprised, but this makes me feel incredibly sad. I built my first PC using parts from there. I’m going to miss it. But once Fry’s pivoted to be a consignment store that was mostly empty and selling pallets of bottled water and perfume, it was obvious the business was about to die. Curiously, Microcenter has managed to live on and seems fairly robust. I can’t help but think Fry’s tried to sell too many differ…
> I’m not surprised, but this makes me feel incredibly sad. I built my first PC using parts from there. I’m going to miss it. Same, the last one I stepped foot in was in 2018 at the one near the Tesla factory in Fremont after my interview, and it looked absolutely dead. I thought with so many tech nerds in that town you'd be bound to see a bunch guys getting together after work and just buying up carts of stuff of th…
I went just before COVID hit: half the shelves were empty - the only area doing business was the PC section filled with old and outdated machines at inflated prices. Sad to see it go, it's the end of a generation, but they should have shut it years ago.
My dad needed a new graphics card for our family computer (aka his computer). I think this right after we upgraded to XP. He spent the whole time trying to explain to 7yo me why anybody would want smaller pixels. I just wasn't getting that you smash more of them into a smaller space to get a prettier picture.
There was an iMac G5 display too, and I was captivated by that
Wilsonville, Oregon is home to Oregon’s only Fry’s location. I grew up there. I remember running into people from all across the state that would come down for its crazy deals. The building is huge and prime real estate in a rather affluent town. I wonder who or what they will do with the property. Maybe microcenter could come in. More likely though BestBuy is the only retailer likely to want such a large place but t…
They weren't yet fully committed to it. Half the store was produce and such -- milk, eggs, lettuce, etc, and the other half was rows of TTL parts, memory chips, diodes, capacitors, and resistors. It blew my mind. I bought a 68000 CPU, 128KB of DRAM chips (64Kx1 density back then), a perf board, wirewrap wire and a wrapping tool, EPROMs, sockets, and built my first computer all from parts I bought at that Fry's.
About 60 seconds away from Fry's was Computer Literacy -- a really great bookstore that, as the name implies, had nothing but computer related books. It wasn't 20 copies of "Computers for Dummies" books. The vast majority of inventory were single copies of the most arcane stuff -- all sorts of college level CS textbooks, and you could ask the desk to order just about anything if you knew the title of it.
I sent a lot of money and time in both locations. Silicon Valley felt like a magical place back then.
I’m not surprised, but this makes me feel incredibly sad. I built my first PC using parts from there. I’m going to miss it. But once Fry’s pivoted to be a consignment store that was mostly empty and selling pallets of bottled water and perfume, it was obvious the business was about to die. Curiously, Microcenter has managed to live on and seems fairly robust. I can’t help but think Fry’s tried to sell too many differ…
Central Computer is still kicking around -for now. This is all changing. It's not the same. You used to have a bunch of grey market PC parts distributors all over the east bay (uProcessor, add on Cards, RAM, HDD, etc) that used to sell to beige box PC makers (and individuals) but they went the way of the dodo too (ASI is legit distributor now). Also, remember WeirdStuff? Gone too. It's a mature industry and the biz h…
John Fry figured he'd sponsor some science, and math is cheaper than, say, physics. So a small library and a room was allocated; you'd get to it through the back entrance, passing secretaries and suits playing mini-golf, until you end up in a very university-like (though small) space.
I've attended a couple of workshops there for geometric group theory (my advisor invited me). It was a pretty solid math experience.
I wonder what will happen to this (I knew the store was a goner a year-ish ago when I couldn't even buy a USB stick there, but still...).