Photos of old computer shops...

[Morkin]

Love the way most of the small 80s computer shops really crammed things into the space they had. That's compared to the commercially larger modern town centre gaming shops of the 90s/00s.

[5MinuteRetro]

...back in the 1980s less of us had cameras (I didn’t), and even those who did, are not likely to have taken it shopping...
Mark

Ain't that the truth! I fear future generations will have the almost-opposite problem: there are just too many photos now, so finding a particular/favourite shot might become very difficult indeed!

[5MinuteRetro]

Northants Computer Centre that was situated on Abington Square, Northampton between 1986 and closed around the mid 2000s

These are superb! To my mind, this is how all shops should look -- none of this neat-and-tidy nonsense that afflicts modern brands.

(And sorry for slow response... been away on holiday and with limited internet access.)

[5MinuteRetro]

Oh and here's 2 photos from the summer of 1988 taken in NHCC during 1 of my weekends back home while working at Ocean Software. I took the pic of Chris who then grabbed the camera off me & took 1 of me while I was telling him to give me it back! 3rd pic has been brightened so you can see what's in the background a bit easier:

Awesome! Bare fluorescent tubes -- there's not nearly enough bare fluorescent lighting in modern shops!

[5MinuteRetro]

Love the way most of the small 80s computer shops really crammed things into the space they had. That's compared to the commercially larger modern town centre gaming shops of the 90s/00s.

Indeed. One detail that's not clear from my (OP) photos is that none of the displayed cassette/disk boxes contained the respective media. Behind the counter -- one small counter in the original store; and then a big, square horseshoe-shaped mega counter after the refurb -- we had secreted tray after tray of loose tapes and floppies, ordered by format and alphabetically.

The customer would bring their prized title to the counter and thus would begin the scrabble to find the correct contents. Mostly, that went okay, though it usually took a good minute or two to locate the magnetic magic. However, sometimes something had been placed or otherwise fell out of order in our trays: that could mean the customer having to wait (and wait) until it was located, or they slumped off in a huff.

I imagine that's one of the reasons why we ended up trialling this hideous beast, which I'm pretty sure I mentioned in another thread around these parts:

[1024MAK]

I imagine that's one of the reasons why we ended up trialling this hideous beast, which I'm pretty sure I mentioned in another thread around these parts:

And how well did that work?
Especially with copy protected disk software, or unusual disk formats?

Mark

[5MinuteRetro]

And how well did that work?
Especially with copy protected disk software, or unusual disk formats?

Well.. it was a long while ago so memories are hazy, but I don't recall it being either good or popular. It sat on the counter (in the refurbished store, blue livery in OP photos) and had some accompanying point-of-sale promotional materials alongside but it went largely ignored. If I had to guess, it probably lasted three months before the boss ditched it -- and we'd perhaps sold 50 tapes/discs in that time. A tiny fraction of all sales, anyway.

In terms of use, it had some clunky DOS interface where we had to select the customer's chosen title from the electronic catalogue, and then follow the displayed prompt to insert a disk or tape, and the appropriate paper for the B&W insert. It then took several minutes for the production process to complete. It was all a bit of a faff, tbh.

No idea about copy protection but all the content was stored on a hard disk or optical disc, which was periodically updated by a rep who visited the store.

That's about all I can remember!

[1024MAK]

Thanks for your memories

I’m not surprised that duplication machine was not successful. As a customer you don’t really want to be kept waiting for two to five minutes waiting for a tape to get recorded...

Mark