some of you know that i wrote a book - "Mages & Modems" - soon to be published, about my experiences growing up in the 80s and 90s with microcomputers in northern canada.
back in 95-97, as a teenager, i worked at the arctic's first ISP. but before it became an isp, ssi micro was canada's only Gateway 2000 computer retailer.
a village of less than 500 people housed a massive 40,000 sq ft computer store.
i've been searching for photos of the old computer store, before it disappeared in the 2000s. the search has been fruitless for twenty years, until today.
today i found the one surviving photo of the store EXACTLY as it was the day i left it to go to university when i was 17 years old.
an annotated version of this photo will appear in the book. the photo is painfully low-res (digital cameras were VERY new in 97), but you can make out some of the details if you squint.
a few fun things: the cowprint sweaters in the center of the photo are official Gateway 2000 gear. i don't remember us selling a single one to a customer 馃槄
directly behind the sweaters are slatwall shelves (every computer store had 'em!) full of games. my big box copy of Dune CD-ROM - the one with the incredible sandworm mouth - came from that shelf
to the right of the sweaters and main entrance, along the shelves, are dozens of ISA and PCI upgrade cards. whenever a customer made a custom order, i'd walk over from the service bay, grab the upgrade card, and stick it in their machine. it was always exciting to get to test new weird stuff like SCSI and video capture boards.
the computer on the far right was supposed to be for customers to test out software and our internet service. i never once saw a customer use it, but i sure as hell got a lot of Quake DMing done on that machine 馃槅 it was a Gateway 2000 full tower with a Pentium 90. the fastest machine in the building.
i was a repair/ISP technician in those days, and my little service bay was beyond the wooden birch-coloured doorway. that room also housed our local dial-in lines (four of them!) and 33.6 Sportsters.
if you're interested in reading the book, i'll be posting about it more in the coming weeks. i've got a few review copies out, and once i've had more feedback and (made some edits) it'll be ready to go.
if you can identify some of the software or hardware in the photos, i'll be happy to include it in the annotated version with credit :)
