AST Research
More info
- Creator
- Albert Wong, Safi Qureshey, Thomas Yuen
- Released
- 1980
- Owner
- Samsung (since 1997)
- Type
- Computer manufacturer
Californian company that started out selling add-in cards for the IBM PC and ended up one of the world's largest PC makers — before being absorbed into Samsung.
The name is the founders' initials: Albert Wong, Safi Qureshey and Thomas Yuen. Out of Irvine they sold expansion cards like the SixPakPlus, which gave an IBM PC more memory, a clock and extra ports on one board — things IBM arguably should have included in the first place.
In the second half of the '80s AST moved into building its own PC clones, and by the early '90s it ranked among the biggest manufacturers alongside Compaq and Dell. Price wars and losses left it vulnerable, and in 1997 Samsung, already a major shareholder, took over the whole company. The brand disappeared shortly after.