From the Unexpectedly! files

Seems Fry's Electronics has gone under.  (Via Insty.)

Fry's would have been one of those things I missed about Silicon Valley, except that it had been circling the drain for a great many years.  It was still a place to buy emergency replacements for power supplies, monitors, and such, but even for those it had gone sadly downhill.

Back in the day, now... I remember when the first one opened, in Sunnyvale - Oakmead Parkway, at Lawrence, I think it was.  The Commodore Amiga was a thing, or perhaps I'm thinking of the Atari ST.  One of those.  Anyway, they carried a diversity of personal computers, back in the days before Wintel took over.  And they carried lots of prototyping components!  I got my NS16032 parts kit there, and a content-addressable-memory chip, and sundry other exotica.

(Am I showing my age?)

Eventually, though, the stores (plural by then) were increasingly filled with ordinary consumer electronics, major appliances, office supplies, generic toys, and other non-geek stuff, crowding out most of the cool specialty items.

A commenter at Insty links to this, which seems largely right for a certain era.

So, let's see now.  Things I miss about Silicon Valley.  Trade shows (died of the Pestilence just after I left; now virtual, which is no fun, but it's no-fun I could have from anywhere with a 'Net connection).  Fry's (but not so much since a decade or so before I left).  The electronics-surplus stores, like Halted Specialties and Anchor Electronics (Anchor still seems to be in business, but Halted, as such, is now defunct).  Asian supermarkets like 99 Ranch (yeah, still miss that one; the Asian population around here is kinda sparse).  Various industrial suppliers (most of which had either gone out of business or moved out of the area in the past decade or so), but maybe I can find replacements around here, once we're out and exploring the area.  Maybe a few other things, which may or may not still exist.

Comments

[Ellen]

Oh, I hadn't realized Halted had sold out to someone else. I used to know Bob Ellingson, the owner. He'd be in his late 60s now, so I reckon he decided he was done with it. I think he sort-of inherited it from his father and always had a sort of love-hate attitude towards the store.