Long before there was a Cowboys stadium in Tarrant County, those of us who are old enough to remember the first desktop computers, Radio Shack’s Trash 80s (the first real laptop, and amazingly cool), and 2400-baud modems drove to Arlington all of the time. There was a store called Soft Warehouse, and it was about the only place in town to buy software.
I mention this because CompUSA, which changed its name from Soft Warehouse in 1991, recently announced it was closing its Arlington store (part of a decision that will close half its stores nationwide, including its location at Central Expressway and Park Lane). I don’t think this Arlington store is the same one; I remember the original being closer to I-30. But in the days before Dell, eBay, and the like, you didn’t have a lot of choices about where to buy software and equipment for an 8088 DOS machine with a 5 1/4-inch floppy drive. I remember 9600-baud modems and how much faster they were. I could dial in — literally, using the modem — to the Times Herald computer and scroll the Associated Press wire.
Don’t laugh. Before that, all we had was something called a Qwip machine, an early version of a fax. Check out the first paragraph of this 1980 Time story about the "Office of Tomorrow."
