AST Research

 Home > Browse Our Collection > Computing Companies > AST Research
 

AST Research, Inc. was a personal computer manufacturer, founded in Irvine, California in 1980 by Albert Wong, Safi Qureshey and Thomas Yuen. (The name comes from the initials of their first names.) AST's original business was the manufacture and marketing of a broad range of microcomputer expansion cards, later focusing on higher-density replacements for IBM's standard I/O cards in the IBM PC. A typical AST card of the mid-1980s would have two RS-232 serial ports, a parallel printer port, a battery-backed clock/calendar (the original IBM PC did not have one), perhaps a bus mouse port, and 384 KB of DRAM (added to the 256 KB on the motherboard to reach the full complement of 640 KB).

AST Research also produced the Mac286, a pair of NuBus cards containing an Intel 80286 and RAM, allowing a Macintosh to run MS-DOS side by side with its existing operating system. The product line was eventually sold to Orange Micro, who developed the concept further

Hardware Products

AST 386SX/20 notebook

AST 386SX/20 notebook
1991
The 6.5-pound AST Premium Exec 383SX/20 uses a 20 megahertz (MHz) processor, 2 megabytes (Mb) of high-performance random access memory (RAM), and a choice of 20Mb, 40Mb, or 60Mb hard drives.This noteb...

Manufacturer : AST Research Inc
Type : Computer

AST Ascentia 800N 486 Notebook

AST Ascentia 800N 486 Notebook
June 1994
This Ascentia 800N/ CS9 was a very advanced notebook sized AT-compatible computer running MS-DOS, Microsoft Office 4.

Manufacturer : AST Research Inc
Type : Computer


 

AST Research

 

 

Help support the museum by buying from the museum shop

View all items

Founding Sponsors
redgate Google ARM Real VNC Microsoft Research
Heritage Lottery Funded
Heritage Lottery Fund
Accredited Museum