51–60 of 119 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And each one of those items would somehow have a dead pixel.
I loved Fry's and shopped there often in the 90s and 00s but it did seem like half of the things I bought there had to be returned for one reason or another.
What always bugged me about Fry's at the end was how disrespectful people eventually got to the sample goods on the floor. I swear, every motherboard had their pins smooshed in. Maybe this is `old man remembers` but it wasn't that trashy in its heyday, when admittedly, I was a kid so maybe I didn't notice. Maybe it's because they had to pivot hard to cheap trinkets towards the end and that brought in a different crow…
Given the kinds of returns that Fry's would accept, I wouldn't be surprised if those were returns they had accepted that way. The one near me would attempt to resell laptop power bricks that had been returned with no AC power cord, and one time I got "new" RAM sticks that turned out to be actually used and so busted that a quarter of the data bus lines were inoperative.
0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7-e_yhEzIw
1: https://99percentinvisible.org/article/ghost-boxes-reusing-a...
For those in the bay area, Micro Center is opening a branch in Santa Clara. https://www.microcenter.com/site/stores/santa-clara.aspx Well, maybe. It's delayed months at this point.
Where else could you simultaneously purchase through-hole transistors, a gaming motherboard, a 19" rack, a leafblower, a loudspeaker disguised as a plastic rock, pornography, a taser, a sandwich and a decent cup of coffee while surrounded by fiberglass cowboys and aliens... sad to see
I miss both Incredible Universe and Fry’s a great deal. Incredible Universe was the only store I ever saw that let me play a NeoGeo and CDi.
I think the best Fry's of all was the former Incredible Universe location, just south of Portland. I believe it was the only Fry's that didn't charge sales tax. The Fry's by I8 in San Diego was an Incredible Universe too. (Not the Fry's in north county, the one further south.)
Where else could you simultaneously purchase through-hole transistors, a gaming motherboard, a 19" rack, a leafblower, a loudspeaker disguised as a plastic rock, pornography, a taser, a sandwich and a decent cup of coffee while surrounded by fiberglass cowboys and aliens... sad to see
if you looked hard, you might even find the offices of the American Institute of Math at a fry's location... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Institute_of_Mathemat...
[1] https://www.greenfoothills.org/pga-tour-eyes-frys-course
Where else could you simultaneously purchase through-hole transistors, a gaming motherboard, a 19" rack, a leafblower, a loudspeaker disguised as a plastic rock, pornography, a taser, a sandwich and a decent cup of coffee while surrounded by fiberglass cowboys and aliens... sad to see
Whenever I was out in the Valley I'd visit one or more Fry's. Then there was Weird Stuff Warehouse and Computer Literacy Bookstore. There probably wasn't any area the size of Silicon Valley that had stores that even remotely compared. Always spent more than I budgeted but never felt bad about it.
Just being able to look at all the various components was a good education.
While attending the University of Arizona in Tucson in the early 90s, I got very confused by posts on Usenet talking about buying computers at Fry’s. You see, the Fry’s grocery store chain still existed in Tucson at the time, so I could not figure out where a grocery store would stock computers! Needless to say when I moved to the Bay Area after college graduation, I wasted no time visiting the closest Fry’s Electron…