Re: For the fun of it

[et472@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Michael Black)]

Mitchell Spector (mitch2gs@hotmail.com) writes:
> et472@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Michael Black) wrote:
> 
> 
>     They were around up until quite recently, even had a webpage.
> It looks like they were bought up by Compusmart. Which is also
> the same company that bought up Crazy Irvings (who incidentally
> began as a local Apple II vendor).
> 
Do you remember when Peter Anthony Holder had one or two people
from the Compucenter at Fairview (it was definitely one on the West
Island) on as his "computer experts"?  That must have been early
nineties, and even then I think the chain had peaked, yet the
store there seemed to be in good shape.  They even had a computer
show on the public access channel on cable for a while.  It almost
seemed like they were doing well despite the rest of the chain
fading.

I never really bought much there, rarely went in either, so my
vagueness about their status is based on looking backwards, aware
that the store in Alexis Nihon disappeared at some point without
me noticing.

> 
>>But that store actually lasted a long time, moving a few doors down
>>to a bigger location, and if I recall they eventually had a second
>>store somewhere.
>>
>>But eventually it disappeared, though I can't recall exactly when.  Late
>>eighties or early nineties, significantly on in the small computer
>>time line.  
> 
>     Remember the name, or where it was located? I wonder if
> I didn't visit it at one time or another.
> 
I didn't bother with the name, because I figured few would
recognize it because they weren't here.  It was Futur Byte, on
Phillips Square.  Camelot, the computer book store, started
on the same street, I can't remember if Futur Byte was still
in business, but it started as a general magazine store, slowly
adding books and eventually morphing into a dedicated computer
bookstore.  When they expanded, they moved into the location 
that had belonged to Futur Byte (again I can't recall what year 
that might have been).  It's been a while since I've been down
that street, so I'm hazy about whether the Compusmart is at
that location now, or if it's a few doors up the street (I
would know if I simply walked past that section).


It's odd.  There was another store, the name I can't recall but it
was near Con-U, maybe Mackay, that opened about 1978.  I might have
been in there only once, and I recall it didn't last long.  But
as I recall, there wasn't much else in the way of stores except
as chains.  Obviously, we saw computers being sold at existing
stores, and there was at least one outlet of that US chain.  
Obviously the Apple clone business brought some stores, but even
they tended to come in multiple outlets.  It's almost as if
there was something about the local market that didn't make
for a standalone store selling computers.

I remember when there was the first small computer show in
Place Bonaventure, in the early nineties, and it was
so late that it seemed much of the intent was missing.  A
decade or two earlier, and it would have been a big deal.  But
by then, pretty much everything was available locally, and the
only appeal was if the show prices were particularly good (but
offset by having to pay admission to get in).

   
>>None of the early stores here still exist.
> 
>     Crazy Irvings sort of lives on as a Compusmart outlet, although 
> I would agree it's not even remotely the same now other than the
> physical location and that it sells computer products. I wonder if
> House of Semiconductors is still around. That's where I would
> pick up my Apple II supplies back in the day. :) I still have many
> Apple II newsletters with the ads for those early stores.
> 
I think House of Semiconductor is no more.  I seem to recall an
article in the paper, less than ten years ago but maybe closer to
ten thatn five, and I seem to recall Frosty posting about it in mtl.general
and I posted a reply about the early computer stores, but I can't
find that post I'm sure I made at the time.

I remember when they started, I think I might have even thought they'd
be a new source of parts when it turned out they were selling clones
and parts to build them.  They even had an outlet downtown.  It
was right across from McGill on Sherbrooke Street (I don't think they
had an earlier downtown location), and I know I bought my first box
of floppy disks there, for all of fifty dollars for a box of 10 in
1984.  They eventually moved to University, just down from Sherbrooke,
until eventually closing. Of course by then they'd become a more general
computer store.  The West Island store, if I'm remembering properly
that it has closed, closed later.

Of course, when I said "all the early stores", it's relative.  To
me, House of Semiconductor and Crazy Irvings were a later wave of
stores.  Maybe all these decades later it was a pretty short number
of years after Futur Byte opened, but living through those years
it seemed like a big gap.

  Michael