Ask HN: What was the last purchase you made at Fry's before they went under?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32453002

by metadat • 4 years ago

10 13 4 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

What was the last purchase you made at Fry's before they went under?

For me it was a spindle of double layer DVD-R discs.

I miss Fry's store #3 in Palo Alto, lots of fond memories going there as a kid in the 90s.

PaulHoule• 4 years ago

I remember people from CA telling me how great Fry's was back when I was an undergrad in Socorro, NM.

I visited that store in Palo Alto once when I went to a conference at Stanford, I was just walking around and bumped into it. Didn't actually buy anything.

kadoban• 4 years ago

A thumb drive. I was there to buy like 80% of the components of a new system, but they had fuckall for PSU, CPU or RAM. Knew at that point they weren't long for this world.

gregjor• 4 years ago

Snickers bar. They were out of everything else.

gardenfelder• 4 years ago

The first Fry's electronics was a converted food market; the Fry brothers owned a series of food markets along route 99 up central California and they asked a research firm to see about branching into the Silicon Valley. The report back went something like "they don't need food stores but electronics gear would be nice" (going on memory from a conversation with an employee in that first Fry's when I visited it). Walk in the front door and turn left - you have a food store. Turn right, an you were in a totally amazing electronics store - far more stuff than Radio Shack ever had, plus the most awesome magazine rack I'd ever seen. That store added a new dimension to the old phrase "chips and dips" EDIT: fixed typo

monty908• 4 years ago

I shopped at Fry's the food market as a kid. The electronics section was small and close to the cash registers. The section had a few movies, disposeable kodak cameras and film, batteries, and other small electronic stuff like walkman's.

doktorhladnjak• 4 years ago

Oddly enough, a food dehydrator. They had a pretty good selection of small appliances there at good prices too.

iancmceachern• 4 years ago

I just threw out my last pair of alkaline batteries store branded to Frys. The end of an era.

lamroger• 4 years ago

So long ago - I don't think I bought anything but wondering around as a kid was great

joezydeco• 4 years ago

100' VGA extension cable at the Downers Grove IL store.

What a boring, soulless store. The inventory was interesting but that was about it. At least we still have MicroCenter.

hakfoo• 4 years ago

I think it must have been a couple of RJ-45 wall sockets at the Phoenix one. By then their computer section was down to a handful of floor-sample cases, no CPUs or memory or most other stuff.

I still have my first purchase from when they opened locally in Tempe-- a 14" "Voxon" brand 1024x768-capable CRT monitor.

I had built a 386DX/40 out of cast-off parts and upgrades-- a real freak box with two MFM hard drives and an EGA card-- and sold it for $150 to finance getting a colour screen for my "personal" machine (the family had a new, but terrible Packard Bell Pentium, and I had a 286 I was progressively upgrading-- 386/40, then 486/33, then overclock to 40, for my personal use) I held out for a few months trying to find one at a thrift shop since $150 is a lot of money for a mid-90s teenager, but eventually saw them offering them as store-opening loss leaders. When I got there, the one they promoted was sold out-- I think it was the "US Logic" brand you saw on a bunch of cheap monitors at the time, so they offered a different one with pots rather than digital picture controls, but I preferred that. Hasn't been plugged in in a long time, probably all sorts of dead.

scottshea• 4 years ago

A USB-C charging cable

altdataseller• 4 years ago

I never shopped at Frys but did shop at The Wiz (basically the NorthEast equivalent). The last thing i remember buying was a DVD for the Lord of the Rings

moomoo11• 4 years ago

Never went to fry’s but my last memory of going to the store for a nice haul was collecting coupons around Christmas time back in the late 90s/early 2000s and then going with my parents and other immigrant family friends to different stores (some had circuit city, some Best Buy, someone at Walmart, etc) in the early morning to camp outside with other shoppers for the doors to open.

We got a camcorder and a headphones, 100s of blank CDs, and I think a Walkman. Great times. I cherish those days so much.

Ask HN: What was the last purchase you made at Fry's before they went under?

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