Commodore Free 24/Commodore_Free_Issue_24_2008_Commodore_Computer_Club.d64/t.iv raymond

Text File | 2023-02-26 | 9KB | 334 lines

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Interview with Raymond Bryan
Owner of Raymond computer store
http://www.raymondcomputer.com

Commodore free
Please introduce yourself to our
Readers

Ray Bryan of Raymond Commodore Amiga
formerly 795 Raymond Ave now at (as of
1 September 2008) 2402 University
Avenue, Suite #405; Saint Paul, MN
55114  http://www.raymondcomputer.com

CF. Can you explain some of the
services you sell for Commodore users?

RB. I have Commodore (and Amiga)
software and hardware for sale (some
of it hard to find items - a lot of
the common items as well); I have been
servicing old Commodore (and Amiga)
hardware for 15 years since buying the
store from Jack Turner of Jack's
Computer Shack.

CF. What machines do you support and
do you support machines other than
Commodore?

RB. I have a number of PET machines
but I do not do much fixing of these.
I have and can service Vic 20s, C64s,
SX64s, C64c, Plus/4 and C128/C128D. I
also have a few C16s and a stash of
chips for the C16 & Plus/4. I still
have many of the chips for the C64 (no
SIDs and no PAL chips that I know of)
and chips some for the C128.

CF. This is a store our reader could
walk into and purchase items as well
as over the internet?

RB..It has been a store-front store up
to now but economic down times have
necessitated moving into a warehouse
space where I am trying to decide if
it is viable to still maintain support
for walk-ins. I guess responses from
Commodore users will be the deciding
factor. I have listings of many (not
all) of the items in store inventory
on the web page
http://www.raymondcomputer.com.

CF.  Are the items new second-hand or
a mixture of the two?

RB.. There are still some new items of
software and a few of hardware but
naturally many more items are
second-hand.

CF. Do you make a living out of this
company or do you run the service as a
part time job?

RB. The store is my only source of
income but the profit centre for the
past several years is in service work
especially out-call services on site
and for the evil-machines; sometimes I
get to fix Unix or Macs in the
site-calls however much of the work is
printers (laser, thermal, transfer,
colour, all-in-one, faxes & inkjet
only in plotters) and I am as a last
resort call for a number of businesses
with older impact/line printers - a
speciality picked up from the
Commodore and compatible 3rd party
impact printers.

CF. Can you give our reader a brief
history of the store, how you started
what motivated you etc?

RB. Mr. Jack Turner started the store
(part-time) in a part of the Commodore
repair business of Frank Gerard in
Spring Lake Park, MN in about 1986. I
met Mr. Turner shortly after that
while trying to use my Commodore 128
in computer controlled installation
art sculptures. In March 1993, Mr.
Turner was ready to leave the business
and I was ready for a new challenge.
So we came to terms agreeable to both
parties and Jack's Computer Shack then
at 898 Raymond became Raymond
Commodore Amiga. In 1995, I moved the
store to 795 Raymond Ave a larger
space that gave more room to work on
computers, but a lot more space to
display Commodore/Amiga software and
hardware.

CF. Where are you located, and could
users from other counties contact you
about repairs or purchases of hardware
and software?

RB. The store is in St. Paul,
Minnesota about 2 miles south of half
way from the equator to the North Pole
and about a mile north of the river
that divides the continent of North
America into East and West. The bit of
Minneapolis that is north of the
Mississippi River is only a half mile
to the west of the shop. I am often in
contact with Commodore users from
other parts of the world. I cannot do
much to help that one guy who keeps
trying to do things to his
Commodores/Pets at the South Pole
(winter there lasts 'til nearly
January and he is cut off all winter).
But I do what I can to meet the needs
of the Commodore users in OZ, Canada
and Europe. I have not heard from any
one needing Commodore help in Africa,
Central or South America for some
years now.

CF. If a reader had items for sale
would you be interested in purchasing
them for resale?

RB. I don't know what to say to that
at this economic moment.

CF. How has the market changed over
the years?

RB. When I first got my shop the
Commodore market was lively and sales
were the largest share of the business
with Commodore repairs coming next. It
seemed millions of people were getting
their first experience with computers
by using Commodores. Now, there are
dedicated Commodore users who have
stuck with (and pushed the envelope
of) these machines and joining those
are collectors and people who grew up
with a Commodore but now make their
living in the evil-machines-land, yet
want to relax by returning to the
first love for playing games or
writing 8 bit code just for fun.

CF. So Is there still a big demand for
Commodore items?

RB. If there were a big demand for
Commodore items my shop would not be
the only one between Michigan and Salt
Lake City.

CF. Has Auction sites like EBay taken
business from you, or do you feel
these have added to your business
survival?

RB. I do not know. I did a lot of eBay
as a survival technique from the late
'90s to early '00s but eBay just plain
smurfs and hardly anyone has yet
picked up on Amibay since it started
last fall.

CF. Do you have an EBay or similar
auction site account?

RB. I have an eBay account but have
not held any auctions for about 4
years now. As I said I have things on
my own web site and am moving toward
offering items on Amibay.

CF. What items you can repair, could
you provide some common examples for
our readers to get an idea of price

RB. Let me say it this way, I cannot
repair switch mode power supplies
(C128d, Amiga) and there have been
some other hardware problems from time
to time that have defeated my efforts
to fix (some C128d and Amiga 4000
motherboard/accelerator troubles). I
am not adept at or knowledgeable about
PET or KIM repairs but have fixed
almost every other US Commodore
hardware that has come along after the
Vic20 excluding the MS-DOS ones. I do
give my best effort on every repair. A
lot of times now, I have to give the
Commodores a lower priority because
the evil-machine types are so
demanding and those machines are so
_totally_ fouled-up. As an aside, I
did fix an electric violin yesterday
with no schematic to guide the trouble
shooting or repair, analogue repairs
like that hark back to my days fixing
radar and radios in the navy '65-'69.

CF. Were you a Commodore credited
repair centre?

RB. Yes, until the 1994 bankruptcy
(and I learned a lot from the repair
centre guru Mr. Frank Gerard). I have
accumulated many of the repair manuals
and related technology from some other
authorized repair facilities around
this area as they shifted their focus
of or dissolved their businesses.

CF. I have seen some pictures of the
store on the internet I guess doing an
inventory of stock would be a long
process, how do you keep a record of
all the items?

RB. I do not have time to try to keep
an inventory. When one was done (and
that was not even complete) it was
largely by willing teenagers who just
wanted to be a part of the whole
Commodore milieu. Mr. Turner keeps
threatening to come back as a
volunteer to take inventory of all the
hardware and software I have in the
storage areas but I think he is not
really thinking about this
realistically since there is so much
more inventory than he knows about.

CF. Do you sell the Amiga One, and if
so how big a demand are you seeing?

RB. I did when I could get them. Bill
McEwen said last fall that he was
trying to make some more. But, I did
not have a big demand for them here, I
sold a half dozen but have had only a
small number of requests since those
sold out.

CF. Do you see a big uptake of Amiga
OS 4

RB. No, not here.

CF.Would you like to Comment on the
current state of "the Amiga"

RB. I think "quiet" is the national
motto for the State of Amiga.

CF. Do you think "Jeri Ellsworth"
promoted the Commodore brand and was
this promotion short lived

RB. Well, there was quite a buzz over
the C1 but I do not think the sales of
those machines was very large, however
the Commodore DTV took off for a short
time.

CF.Did you see a big uptake of the
Commodore 64 DTV hardware then?

RB.I only had about 20 to sell but
soon sold out.

CF. How long do you think the store
can survive?

RB. Only so long as demand for the
products and services continue.

CF. Do you have any other comments you
would like to add or to further
promote your services?

RB. I would like to train some others
how to repair these devices before the
knowledge becomes lost. I mean real
"hands on" not just theoretical
knowledge that gets posted to some
/pub/commodore site on the 'net.
De-soldering takes practice and really
well done soldering technique is an
art-craft but troubleshooting is a
state of consciousness, a mental
practice acquired/achieved like
following the lama.

--Ray Bryan

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Raymond C. Bryan 651-642-9890 vox----
Raymond Computer 651-642-9891 fax----
2402 Univsity Ave  -email: raycomp---
St Paul MN 55114  _at_visi_dot_com---
USA       Amiga - Commodore----------

The battle is sometimes to the small
for the bigger they are the harder they
fall.
 -- James Thurber --
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  http://www.raymondcomputer.com