A friend and I used to really enjoy playing pinball. We happened upon a group of stand up video machines in the late 1970’s as we were exiting our local mall through a Sears store. We noticed Atari’s video pinball which we thought was interesting. We played it a couple of time but we didn’t really enjoy it as much as a real pinball machine.
We did, however, notice other kids our age (mid-teens), gathered around some of the other machines.
I saw in the online Wall Street Journal that Radio Shack is preparing to file for bankruptcy:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/radioshack-prepares-bankruptcy-filing-1421279360
I had read a blog post eulogizing the store from a former employee several weeks ago. I ended up on the Radio Shack Catalogs site:
http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/
…poring over old catalogs, looking at all of the gear that I’d purchased throughout my childhood and through the early years of my adult life. Reminiscing brought back some good memories.
My introduction to the world of electronic bulletin-board systems ( BBS’s ) began in the mid-1980’s.
One evening, my friend John called to say that he’d gotten a modem for his Commodore 64. On a whim, I went to Sears and spent over $60 for the same 300 baud “dumb” VIC-1600 modem. This modem was marketed for the VIC-20, but it worked with the C64 as well. It lacked the auto-answer/auto-dial features that were present in the 1650 modem.