Personally I still use a local parts store, it's more a matter of convenience than anything (and I'd rather pick the component up and look at it in person before buying). But yeah he's a complete dickhead most of the time. 🤣

I'm young as retroheads go, so my memories are a little hazy. However, I do remember CompUSA and Fry's Electronics being good brick and mortar sources for computer parts. CompUSA went out of business years ago, and Fry's is a depressing husk of its former self. Even Best Buy (a misnomer, IMO) seems to be struggling lately.

I remember going to Fry's and being very impressed by a 9800 Pro running the chimp demo. Good times.

Back in 95/96 a friend and I used to frequent a very small local PC store, the kind with just a small shopfront and a counter. It was where I first saw Windows 95 in action. This shop stocked all the in-demand (cheap) parts, I remember buying a Jetway VX board and a Cyrix/IBM 166 there. Didn't have enough cash for a CPU cooler but the guy threw one in. The shop still exists albeit under different management. Our only other retail option is PC World which is terribly overpriced for parts.

From the 1980s through to the mid 2000s NL still had many independently owned computer shops and people running computer businesses from their houses (I did that for a few years). There was so much demand (because few people up to that time had owned PCs) that this worked very well. There were also many chains. Then online shopping took off and killed 85 to 95% of these businesses.

I used to go to this 2nd hand shop in PA. They had everything from guns, Ataris and stereos. I miss that place. Two floors of pc parts, misc electronics, etc.

Back in the mid 90s, there used to be a computer store in the middle of nowhere part of TN I live in, named Cardinal Computer. I have very little recollection of this place since I was maybe two or three years old at most. I distinctly remember playing Virtua Squad on one of their systems in their store, probably the first video game I remember playing. I know my dad bought his 486 rig from there since it had their logo on it. Later on, I acquired an AOpen case, the one that houses my K6-2/450, with the Cardinal logo on it. They're still around; no longer where I live, but in a bigger city south of here. And they no longer custom-build systems; they now sell refurbished Dell and Apple products (they're the only Apple authorized dealer in the region, I believe). And they sell things like video cards, and other miscellaneous parts, of course. It's been a while since I've been there.

Alright, I suppose I should clarify. Some of the people on the forums have had some really bad experiences with general arrogance, etc, and I wanted to know how common that was/how it could be a viable business model 🤣.

Also, I should probably acknowledge that Fry's and Microcenter are concentrated awesome, especially given the combos and discounts they run. There are definitely some good local parts shops (OEM Electronics here is one example).

meisterister wrote:

Alright, I suppose I should clarify. Some of the people on the forums have had some really bad experiences with general arrogance, etc, and I wanted to know how common that was/how it could be a viable business model 🤣.

Well, like I said, it's been a while since I've been to my local computer store. From what I remember, I've had relatively good experiences with this store in the past. Not sure if it's like that nowadays.

I recall visiting a number of computer stores back in the mid to late 1990's, and many of them were indeed very awful and selfish in their treatment of customers. Most did not survive long (a few months to 2-3 years at best); a select few, however, managed to stay in business until the mid 2000's. The main reason was that they had a good selection of computer hardware/software at decent prices, and many customers were willing to put up with their antics in order to get a good deal. As PeterLi said though, online shopping took off and the few remaining survivors quickly vanished. At one time there were about 12 computer stores close to where I live; now I can only find 1 or 2. Their focus has also shifted since they only provide services to small businesses and enterprise contractors by appointment only; no walk-in customers are allowed inside the store anymore.

There was a store I used to visit frequently in the City of Industry called PC Center. It was a family-run business and had a really good selection available at cheap prices. There were a couple of quirks, though: their working hours were strange (one day they would open at 8am and close at 4pm, the next they would open at 11am and close at 11pm), and the number of employees changed frequently (from as little as 2 to as many as 10 or more). They closed for good in late 2003 when the owner died unexpectedly in a car accident and no one else in the family wanted to take over the business. A chinese restaurant now occupies the place.

I spent the mid-90s in Anchorage stationed at Elmendorf AFB. The base had a small computer shop at the BX that was just wonderful, even if their prices were pretty average. I used to love going there to look at the PC game boxes, joysticks, controllers, and new systems that I couldn't afford. Considering this was a small shop, the employees there were quite nice and friendly. They certainly tolerated my dumb questions without making me feel stupid.

Outside the base the two big computer shops were Computer City and CompUSA. Computer City was Mecca for a newbie computer dude like myself. They had everything! Games, joysticks, mice, trackballs, hard drives, cdroms, parts... EVERYTHING! I remember when Mechwarrior 2 came out and they had huge overhead monitors running demo videos of it. I was in awe. I have never seen another computer store as good or wonderful as Computer City.

CompUSA was OK and had everything Computer City did, but they were nothing special. I remember that they kept all their stuff inside glass cases or behind cabinets, so it wasn't as much fun to go there and drool over new toys.

There were a few small shops outside the base. I remember two of them clearly:

One was owned and operated by the sysadmin of "Lunatic's Asylum BBS" in Anchorage. I was a member of the BBS and would stop by the shop infrequently to talk to "Luna", the sysadmin and owner. It was nothing special. They were friendly, but the "arrogance" was definitely there.

There was another small shop in downtown Anchorage whose name I cannot remember. I think it might have been "Custom Computers". These guys were scumbags. I had the misfortune of having these fools build me a barebones system before I really became skilled. One time they installed some RAM into my Diamond Stealth video card and broke the retaining socket. Another time, I got my PC back from them with a virus on it. A friend of mine took his semi-new PC there for something and they somehow blew his 486 CPU. I distinctly remember standing there and watching as the idiot employee "let the smoke out" with an expression of sublime ignorance and stupidity on his face. Even when they weren't busy breaking things or selling used/RMA'd merchandise as "new", they were complete jerks. If you asked a question, "RTFM" was the response you would get... and they probably weren't even Linux users.

Such were the good ol' DOS/Win3.x and OS/2 days.

Internet killed the parts shops, and the computer fairs - not helped by the fact that my local area had TWO circuits of computer fairs competing, and they added more events not far away.

Funnily enough, the one local shop that does survive - is the worst of the lot, a clueless guy that probably learnt it all from an expensive course, was trying to install Windows on a machine when it kept rebooting to the CD instead of finishing ... if you KNOW your installs, then you know that you can pop the CD out at that reboot point... the guy would have been there ages!

A friend's machine "refurbished" by this clown, suffered a failure because the tool-less card retainer had not been latched, and the graphics card popped out.

Some people that call themselves "professional" lack the competence of those amateurs who are interested in what they do.

From what I remember Circuit City in the Gurnee mall here in Illinois was really cool. Rows and rows of big box software, everything from Mcaffee Antivirus to SimAnt. There were also tons of computers, computer components and all kinds of wonderous gadgetry. My father and I used to go there to look at new stuff back in the 90's.

OH MAN COMPUTER FAIRS I TOTALLY FORGOT! That was the coolest ever! Tons and tons of software, computers and EVERYTHING piled onto tables, people swapped gear and purchased games and stuff. It was so cool. (Sorry I can't elaborate much because I was really young but I remember it being awesome)

Computer fairs were a lot of fun. I used to frequent the LA Computer Fair in Pomona, and it was a blast - lots to see and hear, wheeling and dealing, row after row of computer hardware and software. I easily spent the better part of a day just looking for parts at cheap prices. 2008 was the last time I went, and by then it was just a shadow of its former self; just a bunch of cellphones, LED TVs and not much computer hardware to be found (and expensive to booth). Haven't been back since then.

Computer fairs used to be great. I remember the HCC Dagen in NL.

Look up HamFests in your area: usually lots of vintage PC stuff.

I went to my local Micro Center months ago to buy a DisplayPort cable. Cool store but not cheap.

Mostly locally the parts sellers I met from the late 90s onwards in Sydney just wanted turnover without providing any advice or opinion. There was one guy though, "Fast Eddy", who seemed to be the king of wheeling and dealing, and had the know it all attitude to boot - wonder if any other Vogoners know him? Guessing a high proportion of local self built machines in the PIII era had at least some component sold by him. He only recently went out of business, though there are still a few leftover stores about from those days.

PeterLI wrote:

Computer fairs used to be great. I remember the HCC Dagen in NL.

Look up HamFests in your area: usually lots of vintage PC stuff.

I went to my local Micro Center months ago to buy a DisplayPort cable. Cool store but not cheap.

I remember this too! Great times! 😁
I would come to Utrecht (city in the center of The Netherlands) for 2 days by train and on the way home I'd have bags of stuff, almost too much to carry! 😁

I also remember "PC Dumpdag" in the RAI in Amsterdam, it was every 2 months or so and I'd go there with a friend of mine who's also into building computers. Boxes upon boxes of old junk but I got a lot of great stuff from there like a lot of 2.88MB floppy drives (the harder to find PC variants back when noone even knew what they were, let alone wanting them), ZIP drives (got 3 of those nice blue USB 250MB ZIP drives from there), expansion cards and a LOT of HSF's, cables, mouses and keyboards (€2 each, 3 for 5 😁 ) and at some point I even knew where not to buy (because his stuff was always broken) and where I had better luck.

Alas I too remember PC Dumpdag becoming smaller and less interesting (prices went up and the amount of old parts quickly became less and less) but I could still get some decent deals from there.

Computer fairs sound awesome! I wish I could've attended one back in the day...

It looks like the idea is still around, but with comptuers a bit older than the average DOS machine:
http://www.midatlanticretro.org/
and
http://www.vintage.org/

I wonder if there's a fair for computers along the lines of what we see here: Computers running DOS to WinXP with hardware ranging from the humble 8086 to the lovely superscalar Pentium IIIs/Athlons and some failed architectural experiments (Netburst).

I could actually see a market for this due to the popularity of youtube channels/shows like LGR and the fact that this forum not only exists but is awesome!

I never really had any problem with small computer parts stores. The parts for my family's first home-builts around the mid-90s were those type of shops. They were fine.
In the late 90s - early 00s, there were a couple small shops that I really liked. They had a larger sized shopping area with plenty of interesting stuff to browse, and not a lot of salesmen trying to chat you up. That was perfect for my personality. Of course, occasionally a customer would walk in and ask for an opinion, and we all know how strident computer guys are with their opinions, but I just ignored them as background noise.

Those stores were a nice contrast from the major retailers. For one, the small shops knew what they were talking about (even if I didn't always agree). They also had parts the Best Buy / CompUSA class of stores don't sell, such as motherboards and SCSI cables. In some cases, they sold bare components without the fancy retail package, which could make them cheaper than the majors. They're not competitive anymore, but to this day they are still a great way to get cables and brackets. Those little items obviously can't keep them in business though.

My favorite shop in this area had tons of miscellaneous parts hanging on the back wall that you'd never expect to easily find. When I needed an auxiliary CMOS battery for an HP workstation (plugging into a pin connector), it was just hanging there on the wall, no problem. Any sort of peripheral adapter, drive cable of any kind, you name it they had it back there. Best Buy didn't.
Those shops have mostly shrunk down to a tiny nook, where there's just enough room for you to walk in the door and be surrounded by service reps. There's nothing to browse anymore.
My favorite part of those stores was the obsolete 2nd hand parts they would put in rummage boxes for a pittance. I like looking through that stuff finding anything interesting. Unfortunately, as the sales floor has died away, the used parts have also disappeared.
There's one local store I still consider worth walking into. Not a lot out for sale anymore, but the guy there has been able to hook me up with some brackets and cables I needed at reasonable prices.

King_Corduroy wrote:

From what I remember Circuit City in the Gurnee mall here in Illinois was really cool. Rows and rows of big box software, everything from Mcaffee Antivirus to SimAnt. There were also tons of computers, computer components and all kinds of wonderous gadgetry. My father and I used to go there to look at new stuff back in the 90's.

Do you mean Computer City?
I lived there in the mid 90s, and I remember Computer City being at Gurnee Mills. I don't remember where Circuit City was though, maybe it was also in the area.
I was only in Computer City a few times. I remember being impressed with all the stuff they had. They kind of annoyed me though because each time they tried too hard to "help", quizzing me about my computer and offering advice I had never asked for in the first place. I just wanted them to bug off. As I recall, the Gurnee Computer City didn't last very long, maybe 2 years or so.

I had a resentment against Circuit City in those years because of the attitude it's professional commissioned salesmen had against teenage/adolescent shoppers. They were uninviting and made it pretty obvious they didn't want us around because we weren't expected to buy anything. I can totally understand that if a group of kids was behaving badly, but that wasn't the case. They apparently thought we were a waste of store space, and perhaps underestimated the influence we had with our parents' purchasing decisions. No other store projected that attitude, it was just Circuit City who acted like that. When I got older, I had a grudge against them and avoided their stores.

No there actually was a Circuit City in the mall, it was all the way at one end though (I could walk to the spot but can't describe it. 🤣).

Here's a picture I just grabbed off the interwebs as proof:

As for how they were as a business I really don't remember because I was just a kiddo unfortunately. 🙁

It closed a few years back though so it had been there quite a while.