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I've built clone PCs since the early 80's, and worked at Egghead Software in San Jose as an assistant manager in high school. I remember the Fry's grocery store and the original Sunnyvale Fry's way back and the multitude of independent shops, WeirdStuff Warehouse, MicroCenter, Central Computer, JDR Microdevices, Pixel USA (did a lot of business with Tony). There were a zillion independent shops' ads listed in Computer Shopper (it was a good 1.5" / 4 cm thick). CompUSA (a big, hypermart-style tech and electronics retailer) came in and killed Egghead (the shops were just too small to compete) and most other mom & pop's; I was there at the closing firesale. And later Comp USA also succumbed. Fry's was more of a pseudo-flea-market with cheezy looking price signs, and full-page ads in the San Jose Mercury News... their big draw was the Black Friday deals where people line up like people line up at Walmart. Nowadays: NewEgg, PriceWatch.com, FindChips, OctoPart, Halted (HSC), AliExpress, eBay, Amazon If you want to save some money, bargains can also be had traveling to a certain building or two in Shenzhen / Huaqiangbei; and it helps to have a friend who speaks fluent Mandarin. See also: - https://strangeparts.com - https://youtu.be/sZs4NDC4yrI - https://youtu.be/tUXIzJpjEuU PS: The Fry's pictured in the story is the Campbell location where it was fun to run up/down the flat "escalator" as it was like an airport's people-mover, but much bouncier. |
The Fry's in the picture is the one on Brokaw Road in San Jose, not Campbell. It's Inca themed. The Campbell store is Egyptian themed.