“We liked these computers, they actually worked.” -The 8-Bit Guy

"Ok I need you to put the windows 98 installation disk into the cup holder"

30:34 : "Why did I have to wait on hold so long?" "Well, the 10 customers I had before you; they didn't have their serial number ready either..." ROFL, great answer.

imagine THAT! being vetted and hired BASED ON ACTUALLY KNOWING how to do your job really well! Just wow!

I worked on a help desk at two different companies over a period of 15 years, and there was one thing that was absolutely consistent. If the customer was happy with their system, they said "I bought this..."; If they were NOT happy, they said "YOU sold me this...!"

I found a CD stuck inside a 5,25″ floppy drive in my school's computer lab once. It wasn't a very good school.

David: "Surprisingly, he didn’t get fired over that..." Some person in the audience: *_"WHAT?!"_*

The CD-ROM tray when he rebooted it retracted and spilled his coffee. I am hysterical rolling on the floor laughing.

Wow!!!! A convention talk with good audio!!! This is definitely a first for the internet.

My funniest support call was a client who was hearing a loud beeping sound that kept going even if the computer was off. I quickly figured out that it was their UPS (battery backup). I asked them if it was plugged in, and they said, "Oh yes, it is plugged in". I asked them to check a couple of other things, none of which were helpful. I realized that I may not have been specific enough. I asked, "What is it plugged into?" They said, "Oh, it is plugged into an extension cord." I then asked them to see if the extension cord was plugged in. A moment later they came back and said, "Oh one of the other employees unplugged it". So yeah, I got a call where their computer wasn't plugged in.

I TOTALLY empathize with the Mute button experience. The joke on our team was that we had to slave our mute buttons with Jim's phone so that when he 'went off' we would be covered. Eventually we persuaded him to find another coping mechanism.

I used to work in one of those Third-world country call centers (in Colombia, if you really need to know, for a cellphone company). One one hand I have to say that, yes, it looked like that picture but many of the agents did try to help customers, knew what we were doing and didn't just read scripts from the screen. On the other hand, however, it's such a soul-crushing job... call after call... and having to follow so many rules and procedures (for instance, we couldn't use the word "problem") and having to deal with angry American customers (I love you guys, but you can be a handful sometimes...) I don't know... I just hated it... Up to this day I still have a mild panic attack every time I get a call.

As a kid in the 90's, I had a friend who's family got a new computer and AOL. We played with it and left it open for his dad. He sits down and immediately clicks the "x" button and closes it. (Thick southern accent) he says"what happened to muh American Online?" "You closed it when you clicked the X." "Oh hell, I thought that was a game!" "It's okay, just open it back up again." He picks up the mouse like a microphone, and speaks into it "I wanna go online!" We laugh and say "No, click on the AOL icon!" He picks the mouse up again, points it at the screen clicking at it, and we died laughing! He got up, cursed at it, and I don't think he ever touched it again. I feel kind of bad for laughing, but I'll never forget how funny that was to us.

Now i want a LGR Tech Tales episode about AST. FEAT The 8-Bit Guy

One of my "favorite" tech support calls went something like this: .... Me: "Ok sir, is your computer plugged in?" Caller:"Of course it's plugged in! What kind of an idiot do you think I...... I'll call you back."

It's super frustrating trying to explain even the most mundane and simple thing about computers to someone that still lives in a world where a common toaster is deemed as a state of the art of consumer electronics.

My favorite from my training days with Dell was the recording of the guy who told a customer that they “were experiencing an ID10T error.” It was a clear lesson in what NOT to say in the phone with a customer.

I use to work for AST support back in the day with The 8-Bit Guy. We referred to the Ascentia 950 as the "China Syndrome Laptop". On the Grid support side, we actually had Grid laptops in Tanks supporting Desert Storm. They were used for Fire Control. Those "Laptops" were more Luggable than portables though. You can see one in use in "Aliens" The Directors cut, running the robot sentries. AST was a great place to build your PC and Networking skills.

It’s so awesome that you have all those old digital photos of AST. That’s history that would otherwise not exist anymore. Great stuff 😊

We had Commodores and a Coleco ADAM when I was growing up, but our first actual PC was an AST 486DX2/66 with a 3.5 disk drive, 4 MB RAM and a 345MB hard drive. I remember, to this day, my Dad swearing to my Mom as we were trying to justify the price to her... with those specs and the "upgraded" hard drive, this would be the last computer we'd ever have to buy. lol It truly was state of the art... for nearly a year!

Anyone notice that in the older video, "Why old computers were better" the "modern" tech support assistant tells David's wife to run scandisk and defrag and to call back? Now I know where that comes from.

Customer: "Where's the 'any' key ?"

Oh my God, I worked with an old guy in tech support who always did the defrag and call back tango. The rest of the team would transfer the call back to old guy or give out his personal number. Classic rip and flip tech.

I've now watched this 3 times and it gets better every time. We need a part 2 !

i have a friend that worked in tech support for 7 years, one his calls was for HP for an older lady with a laptop regarding a battery issue Lady: yes hello, im calling because i cant keep wasting money and i need a solution, my laptop battery doesnt last anything i have to keep buying a new one everytime because it stops working Friend: oh thats terrible, but a new battery should be working, i can give you the link to... Lady: no no, im not buying more batteries, Friend: well are you charging them properly with the original charger that came with the laptop Lady: ............ the what? Friend:............... the charger, the laptop comes with a charger that you plug into the wall and the laptop to charger the batteries after they run out Lady: ,......................... hangs up turns out the lady had been buying a new battery pack every time it discharged because she dint know they had to be charged

A funny computer story I heard once was: A secretary was asked by her boss to "copy" a floppy disk. So she took the diskette to the photocopier and took a "copy" of it and handed the sheet of paper to her boss. I can imagine his reaction. Another one I heard was that a customer said that their software had the message: "PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE" but that they couldn't find the [Any] key. They can only see [Alt], [Ctrl], [Shift] and [Enter]. Maybe they have the wrong keyboard.

Very entertaining talk. Took me back to my time in the nineties learning as I went in the pre-internet age, where computer magazines were your reference to proper behaviour more often than not.

...who's got people pickin' up the phone, seven days a week and at hours when you should be out socializing." Exactly what I felt I should be doing during my days of tech support 😒

26:59 - "This is how inept customers were at the time." What do you mean AT THE TIME!?

26:03 This photo is widely used to illustrate news about call centers around the world. In fact, if you search for _"call center in india"_ it will return this photo. But this was taken somewhere in Brazil (probably Rio de Janeiro) 'cause the text on the blue shirts refers to a campaign on safe traffic by the government of this region in the year 2008.

That AST history lesson really just heavies the heart.

[Shows a bunch of awesome vintage stuff] "But you probably didn't click on this video to see any of those things." Wait! NO! Go back there!

Telling a person trough a phone how to open up the hard disk and telling them how to remove the heat sink just to show them that they where running a intel proccesor is insane

I love the confidence with which he mispronounces "chimera."

oh man the number of people who STILL call their computer a "hard drive" or "CPU"

The 'chi' in chimera is pronounced like the 'ki' in kite by the way. It's basically exactly what that room somewhat implied. Mashups of multiple animals. I believe it dates back to ancient greece where it referred to an animal with the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and a serpent for a tail.

A 'friend' called me just a few years ago: "I got this used graphics card for cheap but it didn't run stable, so I let the PC run over night so it can get used to the new hardware." That's a special kind of stupid. Eventually I went over and it turned out the GPU needed two 6-pin power connectors, but his PSU only had one, so he thought it would be fine. Some time later he called me saying his mom's PC had random video problems and would shut down shortly afterwards. He had no explanation why and apparently "already tried everything". What did I find? A PC tucked away into the corner of the desk and the only slot in the back for air was occupied by a cat. Replaced the ancient GPU with some crap I had around, cleaned the internals and it still runs to this day. I spent half an hour explaining why cooling is important. Having customers that have no clue isn't so bad. Customers who think they have an idea but have no clue are.

"you clicked on this video to see my tech support tales" yeah well true, but i also wanted to see the retro gaming expo

That's weird. I grew up in the 90's and had NEVER heard of AST until seeing this video. Compaq and Dell for sure, of course, but I never would have guessed they were the 3rd highest retailer.

When I was in primary school, after school I spent my evening at my Kindergarten, that had a group for primary school students. So this was around 2003/2004 and they got a computer that they installed in our private Lego Room. We had a small room that only fitted a Table, 2 Benches and a shelf in it, where we sat with 4 people in it and built Lego stuff in it and the best part was, that we where allowed to let it there. So they plugged everything in but not quite correctly. The monitor was only plugged in into the PSU (yes PSUs had Monitor Outlets back then) and I told them that they also need to connect the VGA Cable (I didn't knew the name back then) and they basically told me to shut up, because I don't know anything. I went of crying, because I cried about everything when people where a bit harsh to me and I drew a schematic about on how to connect everything correctly. I did had an computer back then and I remember getting a Computer in '99, when I was 5. When Windows XP was widely used, I needed to figure out how to access my computer and that without Internet or friends on telling you on how to do it. All User Profiles had passwords on them, where I didn't knew them. It where 2 Accounts and mine only had user rights, because i wasn't allowed to install things, that I wasn't supposed to install. Overall I had a lot of stuff, that I wasn't allowed to used. I had a TV, a VCR, a DVD Player, different Nintendo Consoles and of course a PC but mostly they where off. At some point I waked up earlier to do a book review in the morning and when I finished the part, I decided to turn on my PC and tried different passwords. So after I tried some passwords, Windows was taking quite long to show that it was the false password and I hammerd CTRL + ALT + DEL and the basic login screen popped up and I tried "administrator" with no password and it worked. So I used this account and I woke 1 or 2 hours earlier up in the morning and played some PC Games. After some weeks i got caught.

Oh man, this takes me back. In the 90s you had to practically be a walking tech encyclopedia (for dummies) to do any kind of call center Tech Support. I would often find myself wracking my brain trying to figure out how to explain to do something. "On your desk you should have something that looks like a TV, something with keys like a typewriter and a small object that looks a little like a mouse, I need you to move the thing that looks like a mouse, do not lift it off the desk, just slide it around. Did you notice how when you do that the small graphic on the screen moves in unison with it? Ok, now I want you to move that graphic over the other little graphic that looks like (describe icon). OK now on your mouse, toward the part where the cable comes out there should be 3 plastic switches that look almost like fingers cut out of the plastic, I want you to click the one on the left twice quite quickly without moving the mouse off the icon." 2 hours later you eventually have them in their email client composing an email to their friend who will also likely call you in a few hours to ask how to check his email 🤣😂

It says EVERYTHING ON THE SCREEN WILL BE FAXED! Damn that one was EPIC.

The best support issue I've heard of was from my friend who worked in the same computer lab in college that I did. The student was assigned a computer in the computer lab that only had a 3 1/2" floppy disk. But they had a 5 1/4" floppy. So the student proceeded to fold the floppy in half so it would fit and wanted to know why the computer couldn't read the disk.

I did Dell support for a few years in the late 90s ..and a LOT of these stories (the defrag guy , the death matches, the mute guy) were pretty similar to what happened over there

People are probably laughing at the "top of the line" calls. But I DO feel them. Back in the 90s, product cycles were CRAZY. You bought a reasonably powerful machine for 3000 bucks and it would be middling at best half a year later. What didn't help was the SX madness that was going on. Those basically were crippled CPUs. Within half a year, buying one of those would really hurt you. And who hasn't seriously considered those Overdrive contraptions. If you wanted to upgrade, you basically needed a new CPU and mainboard and more RAM of a different kind. Things got really stupid once CD Drives got in the mix. These days you are absolutely fine with a 5 year old computer. Replace the video card. At most. In the 90s. 5 years would mean that you are on a late 386 while stuff started to expected early Pentiums. Imagine you just bought a nice 486 60MHz. A couple of months later, you could get a 486DX 100MHz for the same price. Which was nearly double the speed.

Hitting the mute button and cursing at the customer! Brings back memories of times that I spent working in call centers. "You stupid f___ing idiot!!!!!" Fortunately, I always made sure the mute button light was on! 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Brings back some memories - I worked at Circuit City back in the early 90s and loved AST machines. Initially they were some of the best quality machines we sold - But super expensive compared to other machines. They were solidly built and performed well. I did see some changes along he way, but I left before they got too bad I suppose. I never knew the background as to why they failed.

"They just squeeze them in like sardines and they pay minimum wage" Best Phrase I ever heard about IT support, and BTW that is the reason (the other is my age, I can´t stand managers anymore ....) I never ever be working as support on a call center.

I still remember some of my clients windows and office installation keys by heart from my tech support days 15-20 years or so ago. It just occured to me watching this video.

What do you call an AST laptop after the screen has broken off? A half AST laptop.

In the late 1980s ('88 or '89 I think), I (like many computer nerds of the time) had a side business as a "computer consultant". I sold a few AST computers that I bought through the distributer Softsel (later became Merisel). The AST 286 was a GREAT machine. Every part on that machine fit perfectly. Every screw on the case went in straight, and every slot was perfectly aligned with the case opening. It was a HUGE difference compared to most everything else on the market at that time.

I know I am late to see this presentation but I wanted to thank you for bringing some of my memories of my work as a tech support guy. I worked at a company and supported the 300+ staffers there as pc was getting rolled into the offices. I enjoyed my time at that job over 10 years there. Some of what you experienced i ran into myself. So thanks. Gave me a smile.

My first ever computer aged 10 was a second hand AST running Windows 95, memories come flooding back! I clearly remember the power supply failing and an engineer coming out to replace it, and we purchased a scanner and I scanned in a huge high resolution photo then set it as the desktop background and panicked as it then took about an hour to boot into the desktop due to it trying to load in the image file! Then we got a Packard Bell, then a HP Pavilion (GTA3 on a TNT2!) then by that point I had learnt how to build my own computer :) Now I've worked in IT 15 years...I miss the good old days! :(

Fascinating look back at AST. LPGE was a huge success. Great job by those who set it all up. They know who they are.

I love how much he is enjoying himself. Amazing talk!

I was at Blizzard's headquarters in Irvine, CA. It's interesting that used to be AST's HQ!

1980s: Techsupport guys know more than customers 2000s:Customers know more than tech support guys 2020s:Techsupport guys call customers to fix their own problems.

ok, this video was definitely worth the 48 minutes of my time. Keep up the good content.

5:22 For anyone wondering what the unmentioned port on the AST sixpak card is, it's a game port, which used a separate backplate with a CD15 connecter, & attached to the card via a pin header.

I was a technical writer at AST from 1986-1995. Yes, I wrote the user manuals nobody read. Tech Support people would tell us, "We asked the customer if they read the manual. We would then hear them taking the shrink-wrap off the manual." I started working on Data Comm boards. I then worked on guides for Bravo and Advantage computers. I still have fond memories of working at AST. It was the company that brought me to Orange County, and I found a way to get a reference to AST in my novel Amiga.

That call center photo that you showed is from Brasil. Its an old picture from the DETRAN ( the public organ that administrates transit) call center. The computers that the used is from a nacional brand called Positivo In their shirt you can read a government campaing "don't be irracional on traffic" This photo is probably from 2005-2007

Our lab printer was taking a lot of damage. I finally had the lab tech replace the note "Hit Page Advance Button" with "Press Page Advance Button"

wow.. back in the 90's I ran the professional services department for a very large ISP. I was a lead from the trenches kind of guy. So, I took the calls that were either very difficult, or involved particularly pissed off customers. We took a lot of calls from "consultants" who a few years previous had been making bank on novel networks. Now, TCP was the new big thing and they were out in the real world charging surprisingly large sums to setup ISDN and the occasional T1. Or worse, email servers.. So, on day we have a pissed off consultant.. He was setup up a CISCO 2600 for a customers new T1 line. He was dead certain that we had done everything wrong.. ( we had a script that generated customer connections ) So, on our end the interface was ready, routing was up and ready and even the filters were all ready to go. He however, didn't understand CIDR, or the idea of GATEWAYS and kind of only had a slight idea of howto use Cisco IOS.. Also, with the customer there he had decided to sound smart and started the call by telling me that we were doing OSPF wrong. I quickly discovered that he was not actually very good at following simple instructions. I was pretty used to using the consultant on the other end of the line as a remote management utility, but wow! Not this guy.. so, after two full hours of trying to get him to essentially just follow my instructions.. I may have gotten a bit short with him and may have strongly implied that he was too stupid to be doing this kind of work. not long after I had reached the point of no return, he suddenly was willing to follow instructions and suddenly the interfaces were up/up traffic was passing and everyone was happy. I hung up.. My VP level boss had started listening in after about an hour. He had just become my boss and was getting an idea of what we actually did on a daily basis. So, I wandered over to his office... The first words out of his mouth when I got there were "did you call him stupid, and then he thanked you for it?"

"Had that been an AST monitor *chuckle* it would probably have broken a long time ago *Laughter*" "*Realizes no one is laughing and akwardly stops laughing*" This is why I love this channel

I used to do tech support for Compaq (desktop Presarios) in the late '90s. Once I received a call from someone who had no sound. The previous "tech" told him to reformat and reinstall Windows. All he had to do was plug in his speakers! Unfortunately, that was common place there. I don't know who was worse: the people calling in or the people I worked with!

Former Packard Bell technician, watching this video has triggered my ptsd

AST was my first tech support job many years ago, this brought back a lot of memories. I remember the AST Merlin, I called it the fakeintosh. I started there close to the end, worked for Tech Team.

I work in IT tech support at a Hospital and all of this stuff still holds true... Forward slash... the one on the question mark key. Backslash, the one above enter. Usually at least... Forward slash is leaning forward and backslash is leaning back. Press the windows key, in the bottom left in between control and alt. What do you see on the screen. No... What EXACTLY does it say... Can you make sure the Ethernet cable is connected on each end, 1 second late, Okay done... Okay yeah right, can you actually unplug the cable on each end and plug in back in.... the best way to trick someone into making sure a cable is connected is to have them unplug it and then plug it back in. More times than you’d think, they end up saying oh the cable wasn’t plugged all the way in... Yeah that’s why I asked you to make sure it was connected and you outright lied to me.

That convention looks awesome, wish they had that here in Australia

That Soviet computer is a PDP-11 clone, together with a terminal that's essentially a VT52 clone with Cyrillic alphabet support added. The system runs a copy of DEC's RT-11 operating system. I've managed to get two versions of this game running under emulation via SimH. The biggest problem is supporting the terminal's character handling, as it uses the obsolete KOI7 system to encode Cyrillic, whilst also having one block character mapped to DEL.

26:18 That picture, for sure, is from a callcenter in Brazil. I know because of the "lost and found" folder, on the right bottom corner of the picture.

I'm glad when i finally had my own PC on windows 95, i have tech savy friend who taught me lots of stuff. Installing cracked game, cleaning PC, installing windows, changing part.

Heck yes. Managing a call centre solely by stats e.g. rate of calls resolved is a horrible way to do it. Glad your managers were wiser!

48 minutes of 8bit guy??!! give me a sec to get some snacks, this gonna be good

Watching your videos is always emotionally depressing for me because when I was like 15 I had most of the vintage systems you had there (they were just "old junk" at that point), but we were kicked out of our home and I had to leave them behind. And now they are worth hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Great presentation. Because you don't work there anymore gives you the freedom to share interesting behind-the-scenes stories. Always great when someone can talk freely about their own work experience. Most of the time with people who are talking about a current job I'm not willing to believe any of it. Because it is usually so biased in favor of the company reputation.

Definitely not an urban legend. "There's a problem with my automatic cup holder." My brother and his friends told me about this in the nineties at the computer store they worked at. It happened more than once. Eventually, I started working there in the early 2000s and saw that the different stories they told were true. I found it shocking because I was in no way a computer expert.

When I was in boot camp we had Castle Wolfenstein in a hidden directory.. One of the drill instructors was trying to find where we'd hidden the game and was giving me DOS commands... I used "DIR/W" to show a wide listing... until he'd actually found the hidden directory and asked for a listing and I knew typing "DIR\W" looked similar but showed "File Not Found".

I think that AST 486SX/33 was my first PC. Not sure why I bought it, I guess it was the new thing at the time, but it did start my path into a career as an IT Pro, so thank you AST for that. :)

We had AST computers at one of my workplaces. I remember when we got one of the first Pentium PCs, IIRC it was a P60, the computer was super heavy. I had an AST 486/66, it was faster than the P60 for most things, we hated the P60. I really liked those AST 486s, they were pretty will made.

30:05 I work in IT for an academy and I had a teacher raise a ticket the other day that she couldn't plug her keyboard into the hard drive. Now I know that her computer knowledgeability is stuck in the 80s.

Loved those tech support stories! I've been in IT for 20+ years and only spent 1.5 of it in a call center (never again) and this really brought me back. Hearing about those crazy calls reminded me of the time I tried to help a 90 year old lady get her Windows 3.1 machine online (this was in 2007!) when she knew nothing about computers and was using a magnifying glass to look at the monitor since her sight was so bad. Turns out her great grandson had given her the machine and let's just say he's lucky I never met up with him in a dark alley! We also had the guy who would hit mute to cuss during customer calls...he was a master at hitting that button and swearing (in the same sentence) and somehow he never did it with the mute button off. Get cursed at myself was a daily occurrence and I talked to every manner of customer including a heavy breathing pervert who kept making crude sexual references and a hippie on so many drugs that he just wanted to talk about pyramids and aliens and couldn't remember the reason he had called in the first place. And then there was the extremely hysterical woman who kept screaming at the top of her lungs that she was so upset about her computer that she was going to slit her wrists and commit suicide (and trust me, I think she was serious). However once I fixed her issue (which had nothing to do with the services we provided!) she eventually calmed down and I can only hope she looked into some psychological counseling.

I come back to this video every now and then and it brings me such joy. You're the best David.

Having worked tech support for an ISP I can say I don't miss it. I can also say that when you read or hear any tech support story it is highly likely to be true, unfortunately customers do the strangest things.

My own mother was one of those "CD drive cup-holder" cases.

What I was always astounded by customers calling the monitor "the computer" and the main computer "the hard drive" or "the cpu".

22:10 That looks exactly like the movie Office Space. I was born in 92 but I was into PCs since age 5 so a lot of this stuff brings back memories. That convention looks great, in my city there's a ton of cosplay stuff but almost no technical hobbies gatherings. Love this channel. Thanks for the stories.

My first home computer was an AST Research 386 purchased at Circuit City ~1991. Computer, CRT, and a bubble-jet printer for $2100! Now, I was pretty early to the computer scene... my Dad worked for the government and learned the early programming languages-- Fortran, Cobol, etc. In fact, he ended up as a Senior Systems Analyst as a GS18, and I remember him taking my sister and I through the building he worked in at the Pensacola Naval Air Station. The building was really cold, and it was just like you see in the old movies with the reel-to-reel tape drives, and punch cards, and secretaries wearing sweaters. One of my first jobs was working as a dispatcher for a trucking company which used Sperry-Univac computers to coordinate loads and backhauls between company terminals (1981-1983). In 1984, I went to work for Kmart in one of their new (for them) Auto Parts Centers. They were really high tech in that they used IBM PCs for sales and inventory... among the first to do so. A few years later, after they shut down all of the Auto Parts Centers I ended up with one of those PCs! Somewhere along the way, I even had a Commodore 64. But back to the AST computer... running Windows 3.1 with 4 mB of RAM, 210 mB hard drive, a 9600 bps modem with which I spent way too much time on AOL... learning how to use DOS to defrag the hard drive to make more room for new games and programs... remember DOOM? Red Baron? The Incredible Machine? Leisure Suit Larry? Ah, yes... the good old days!

*User:* Hello? -my laptop has melted. *David:* Have you tried turning it off and back on again?

Great stories. Here are some experiences I had with AST as a customer: - I lived near AST HQ in Irvine, CA in the 1980'[s when they were making the "hot", well made 286 desktop. I was an internal audit manager at a nearby company and knew the internal audit manager from AST. I had an Apple II, but lusted after the 286, so I cut a deal with her and traded some internal audit checklists for a returned 286 which I used for awhile. - Later, I worked at Ashton-Tate, maker of dBase database software. We had many developers using TWO AST 386's each, one for coding, the other would run compiling the code. I visited the Northern California development office and found newly hired programmers were sitting without doing much work. While interviewing them, trying to find operational improvement ideas, the newly hired ex-IBM Software Developer manager yelled at me for taking up programmer time. But I found the second computers for the new programmers were backlogged. I tracked the purchase order back to the Southern California office of Ashton-Tate, and the orders were sitting in my boss's inbox, the CFO of the company. He couldn't believe they needed all the computers, and just let the orders sit. I called him, told him why they were needed, and they were shipped the next day to the idle programmers. - Finally, when Ashton-Tate was sold to Borland, I went to work as an internal audit manager at Nissan Motor Corp. in Southern Cal. I was on the tech committee. They were behind most local firms in buying personal computers, but had just bought $7-million of AST 286 computers. At that time, Lotus 1-2-3 (DOS) was king of spreadsheets, and firms usually bought separate wordprocessing, database and graphic chart programs. The leading graphics software firm came in, and demonstrated their new Harvard Graphics graphing software to the software tech committee, which I was on. They showed how fast it was running and managers were getting excited. Then I noticed they were using the later AST 386 machines which were faster. Once I asked why they were using a PC we did not have, they lost the sale by trying to fool the committee. I still have a stuffed AST promotional Tiger. The early AST's were quite good. Cheers! Vance Jochim

I remember calling AST support quite a few times while upgrading our 1994 486-SX/33 system. About four years after my family bought the machine, one of the AST tech support guys talked me through installing a PNY AMD 133mhz chip in the overdrive socket. No questions about the age of the machine or whether or not it was in warranty. Got me up and running on the new chip in ten minutes. Truly amazing tech support! This machine still fires up today.

Been watching you for years, had no idea you worked for AST. My first computer was an AST Pentium 100 with 16 megs of RAM and an 800 meg HD in 1996.

related to your winfax story.... when my daughter was 5, she drew something and colored it. I suggested we send it to grandma. So daughter got to put the document on the flat bed scanner and put the lid down. I scanned it and emailed to mom. About 5 minutes later, daughter comes thru, lifts the scanner cover and says "LOOK.... grandma sent it back already!"

One of my favorites from personal experience. One lady was following some written instruction that I had produced. She came to a point in the instructions where I had written "Press any key to continue.' After about a minute or so of her looking at the keyboard I said, "What seems to be the problem?" She said "I can't find the any key!" Another one - I told one young lady "You know you've been on the computer too long when you talk to it as if it were a person. (something I have done) She said "Oh, I'll never do that." About 5 seconds later she's yelling at the computer "I said yes!!!" I said "There you see?" Her reply was "Oh my!"

Just came across this video. I grew up in Fountain Valley and remember seeing the AST building all the time. They were in the industrial part of FV, near Fry's and Costco. Been watching your videos more often these days. Keep up the good work. I lived in Dallas from 1995 - 2004, attended SMU, and worked in the area.

Love your channel. Over 20 years ago I had an AST all in one. I loved it. I did have to have in home service but don't remember the issue. It was resolved and the system lasted for a few more years until I upgraded. A few years after that I did Dell Tech support (for 6 years) for a third party provider. I enjoyed it. I loved "wearing the White Hat" -- being the good guy. Solving the problem. I never had a call that got ESCALATED. In fact I helped calm down several other tech's escalations.

Thank you. I felt like I was part of the audience. My PC support only extends to friends and family but as I'm a developer, it's difficult not to scream at them.

Hey Dave, I am reminiscing and greatly amused watching this video! I started my career back in the mid 90's doing desktop support/repair (I would actually drive to people's houses to do factory warranty repair on their Packard Bell or Compaq machines for $25 per call...no salary or expenses)...I laughed out loud when you mentioned customers calling the computer "the hard drive" as well as the "cup holder" story, I can totally relate. Anyways, I had one that I only had happen once and never saw again...I arrived at an elderly gentleman's house to repair a faulty CD-ROM drive. He said that he inserted disks in it and they wouldn't work and that he couldn't get them out again. So, I took the side panel off of the tower to remove the CD-ROM drive, unscrewed the screws and could not, for the life of me, remove the thing...it was jammed in there...I investigated closer and found 5 CD's jammed on top of the drive, between, the drive and the bay. I got a flat screw driver in there from the side and was able to dislodge the stack of CD's and get the drive out. The man had been stuffing the CD's into the seam between the top of the drive and the bay...I have no idea how he was even able to get 5 discs in there! After it was all said and done, I gave him a lesson on how the drive actually worked...he was embarrassed but was a good sport when all was said and done...sorry for the long comment but just want to say that I love your channel and I am a huge vintage commodore guy myself...my first computer was also a VIC-20 back in '82 or so.. Keep up the good work!

I am very impressed. I've always seen AST's sold in store but to learn about the background and history you do an amazing job. I loved the tech support tales. Great channel Subscribed!

i would've loved to hear some of the best calls you had with a knowledge customer that was like brainstorming , other than that top notch work really shows how good you are and were i didnt feel the 48 min i enjoyed it like it was 5 min lol