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Comment by JSR_FDED

9 hours ago

What an amazing labor of love to catalog all these machines. Some of the stories behind each individual machine are amazing.

I remember when Fry's Electronics (was it Palo Alto or Sunnyvale?) had one on display.

Man... tangentially, is there a coffee table book about Fry's yet? I remember in the dot com days they had a lounge pianist there as well as a cafeteria? And also, oddly, adult magazines by the check out lines.

  • I loved all the themed locations in Southern California, although the north-Orange county one, where the theme was just “aerospace” and all they really did was put a giant Space Shuttle model in the center (Burbank’s 50s sci-fi movie theme was, I think, the best of the lot).

  • I feel sad every time I think about Fry's and the death of big box electronics retail. I still long for those trips where I'd simply spend hours looking for what's new. Amazon can't deliver the same high and neither can Microcenter, the not-so-bad modern version.

    Don't get me even started about Radio Shack :'(