vga256<p>over the years i've become more interested in game/software ephemera than the software itself. </p><p>for example, few people under 20 have grown up with a local computer store or brick & mortar store that sells boxed games. biking over to the computer store to line up, pay cash, and buy a game you've been saving for months has become an alien experience.</p><p>a few days ago i bought some old PC boxed games from a guy that had them in storage for decades. of all of them, i was the least excited about Millionaire. it looked like the kind of lazy portware that probably started its life as a text simulation on the Apple II and made its way to every godforsaken architecture.</p><p>tucked away on the last page of the manual was an absolute treasure: the original VISA transaction record for the day the game was bought, for $52.88, on July 20, 1985 at the Real Canadian Superstore in Edmonton, AB, Canada. This is before Canada had the goods and services tax (GST), and when Alberta was abbreviated to Alta.</p><p>the owner stapled it on to the warranty registration card, just in case he had to return it or RMA it some day.</p><p>Superstore #1572 is still there, in the north end. while i knew they had always sold video games, i had no idea that they sold IBM XT software way back in 1985.</p><p>(for anyone not in Canada, Superstore is a national discount grocery chain.)</p><p>even better, no one under the age of 30 will have seen these credit card transaction records. they were made using a "credit card imprinter" - a sliding mechanism that pressed the card number through several layers of invoice and carbon copy paper. The invoice papers were usually two or three layered - a white and pink copy for the business, and a yellow copy went to the customer.</p><p><a href="https://dialup.cafe/tags/vintageComputing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>vintageComputing</span></a> <a href="https://dialup.cafe/tags/softwarePreservation" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>softwarePreservation</span></a> <a href="https://dialup.cafe/tags/digiPres" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>digiPres</span></a> <a href="https://dialup.cafe/tags/canada" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>canada</span></a></p>