We all miss these computers because computers used to be fun to use not anymore. I liked it when we wrote our own programs and we could taylor it to our needs. Now we are forced to accept features we don't need or want. Also when you turn on a machine it's was up and running no waiting and shut down was just a power switch and the machine was actually off and not consuming power. I use pre windows machines at work and they are up and running within a minute. Just program loading and it's not taking time. DOS was good in its time and many still use a DOS computer. In electronics it does many test functions and no update interference.
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.
Do that. We throw those stickers away." I said "they're Post-its! Not "stickers," dummy!". So I had to tell my department that Post-its stacks needed to move to the cubicle desk light so they wouldn't have to recreate the stack frequently.
Whenever I got a new computer, I would build a stack of post-it notes with the machine's serial # or contract #(compaq), so I would just lean over, peel off one prepared Post-it, and I would be ready for the support tech. I passed that little labor saving trick on to my whole department. It got back to the I.T. department & they demanded to know why all the machine's in our department had Post-its stuck to the back of the machine's. I explained it was a labor-saving trick when calling support. I.T.
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.
It happened to me a couple times. I immediately came up with the excuse "Sorry my computer has been acting up all day" pretending I was swearing at the computer not them 😏 But yeah that's bad
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 worked both IT and help desk in college. It was NOT easy, in fact impossible, keeping Microsoft DOS and Windows users happy. You think Windows 10 is a nightmare, you haven't tried DOS and Windows 98. No matter how much they paid for a system, it had large numbers of bugs. Our UNIX workstation users (SGI, SUN, HP) had the least complaints. Occasionally it would crash.
You must have the patience of a saint..I couldn't even handle supporting my own mother, even though I built the computer she was using...She'd simply *uck it up by downloading crap...I literally had to go to her house (like 2 hours away) to figure out what she had done...And her task bar/TSR's would be PACKED and the computer would be running like a 4.77 mhz, even though it was a 2010-2017 era system...It could take HOURS to get anywhere, and I'd often just have to drop off a spare computer and take hers home with me and work on it over a week or so..Luckily, she had little to no personal data on it, so I could easily re-format the hard drive and re-install everything....But it was a regular problem..I can't imagine having to do that over the phone for strangers..I'd go INSANE...
@@livesimplyandhumbly I was one of those people..I started with a commodore 64 when I was 14 and then a family 286 (Tandy 1000) and then FINALLY, I got my own PC at 25 years of age in 1992-A ZEOS 486 DX2-66MHZ with 16MB Ram and a 15" monitor and my sister saw it (because it was a full tower case) and jokingly accused me of trying to take over the world with it...But, I learned most of what I knew from magazines...I had zero friends, except at work, and NONE of them had computers..And tech support often cost money back then, so I had to figure a lot out on my own...And yes, I learned A LOT just trying to get DOS games to run...Then later, Windows games...Starting really on Windows 95, as that was the "cool" OS...3.1 was weak in comparison-You still had to exit to DOS to play pretty much any decent games...And there was this regular and constant upgrade cycle....Usually the video card every year, maybe 18 months...And the cpu/motherboard/ram and even storage, every 2-3 years or so...AND the original computer system cost me like $2495 or something like that...It was the least expensive computer at that "power" level I could afford and I STILL had to finance it over 3 years.....And of course, right after I bought it, the Pentiums started to come out, but they were like $3500-$4000 and even more...Now, my $2500 computer has 3 hard drives, including an NVME SSD and a 32" monitor and a Core i7-8700K and 16 GIGS of ram...And 200MB cable internet, as opposed to 28.8 to 56K baud modems...I'm FINALLY using a computer I felt I should have had back in 1992...
@@bdphotog6785Easiest way to fix that is to create a separate admin user and remove your mother's administrative permissions. I did this for my mom and I barely hear out of her about it, and she calls you before installing that crapware because she can't.
That's how I got my job where I am now. Almost the exact same process, asked a bunch of questions in the interview about how I would fix X or Y and then sent me to the factory where we build these machines for 5 weeks to talk about how they work and how to adjust / diagnose / repair them.
The same thing happened to me at university. They had 486 and floppy disk 3.5 and 5.25 floppy. Someone inserted a CD and it was still in their and I was able to take it out. It was obvious to me that it was not a CD drive. I didn't even know what that 5.25 floppy drive was until I looked around on the internet or magazines.
Used to work at a software company and during the transition to CDs another common thing was to have the customers insert it into the gap BETWEEN the 3.5 and 5.25 drive. Or when they would get 5.25 disks and had a 3.5 drive they would fold them in quarters and insert it that way. Also had a customer take the 5.25 disc out of the plastic sleeve and insert it into a CD-rom drive. I couldn't help myself one day when the customer called and was trying to install a Windows version of the software on a Dos machine and had them say they had to use the corner office as their cubical didn't have Windows. I was like 'What did you say?', ok, what 'color' is the screen? It's black, ok let me send you the DOS version of the program as we aren't concerned about if you have a view or not.
...I was stupid enough when I was 4 years old with my grandma to mistake floppy drive for disk drive, because I didn't know about the button to open the disk drive, so we both assumed it is supposed to go there... We understood soon enough that it was a mistake, but a little too late😂 I also have to say, that even though we had a floppy drive (I think it was 5 inch one, because how a disk can fit into a 3 inch drive?), I've never seen a 5 inch floppy until I got into my twenties 😂 so maybe it wasn't that bad
Don’t laugh. Had a lady call home office section and said she said “I wish to order a new part...I broke my coffee cup holder...can you send one out?” True story 😂
@@eizol568 one of my friends was a phone and PC repair tech for the college I went to; I heard of regular stories where tenured profs were indeed doing exactly this - using the CD-ROM tray as a coffee mug holder, until it eventually broke.
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 have had multiple calls years ago with people complaining the computer didn't work when the power had gone out. "Sorry, I can't tell what it says as the lights are off."
:D classics. Like someone who calls tech support because his keyboard doesn't work. Of course asking if it is plugged in is always answered with yes. The tech support asked him to pick the keyboard up and walk away at least 5m and then ask if they could take the keyboard that far. At that point they finally realised it wasn't plugged in -.-
I saw UPS plugged into extension cord plugged into this very UPS. That Ouroboros-style istallation was made by IT guy after moving computers from one room to another.
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.
Wow old technology that still works. Just like the space program if it works don't fix it. That's why I like the idea of building my own computer. You don't have to have apps you don't use, its just a waste of money and battery power.
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.
@keselekbakiak I've had callers try to tell me how a certain feature of Windows works, and it's almost always readily apparent they've never even thought of using that feature in their life. Computer literacy may be more widespread than back in the '90s, but it's only at the most basic level.
...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 😒
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
Heatsink back then where clamp-on on usually quite small, and the heat produced by the CPU was not much (not talking about the "volcano" AMD K5 here). Even if they didn't apply any new thermal compound after that chances were that those would continue to run for ages. Friend of mine had an Pentium 75 from Packard Bell with no thermal compound at all (not his fault) and it ran for years. My Dad's old 25mhz 386 had no heat sink at all. there was a case fan blowing air over it, nothing else.
@@Crazy_Borg the thermal compound was sol as a product that will fit small holes in the petallic cover of the CPU. Those "holes" are microscopics. So if their argument is correct you really don't need a big amount of compound. NOwadays they put so many compound on their CPU that it became another entirly new layer.
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."
I had a call like this once doing support for Compaq laptops and desktops back in 2001. I didn't actually work for Compaq, this was The Answer Group, a contracted support company in Florida. Anyway, dude calls up because his laptop isn't charging. He has it on his desk and the little battery indicator light just blinks and turns off, because the battery is dead. Ask him if the thing is plugged in and the guy legit checked. He said he was looking at the plug in the power strip (which was on) and the other end was plugged into the laptop. The power brick actually had its indicator light on. I was about to send him out a new AC adapter when he traced the cord and found that his fucking rabbit chewed through the cord from the power brick up the back of the desk to the laptop. He swears and hangs up the phone. I was nice. I sent him a new one anyway.
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!
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 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
I had a customer who purchased a desktop PSU call me saying it was DOA. Turns out he thought it was a battery and didn't plug it in. I have hundreds more stories of things like this.
I try so hard to put myself in their position, but some of these stories just don't make any sense. Wouldn't the instructions have shown her the battery has to be recharged? Ugh.
@@cvbabc People are stupid and will go to great lengths to ignore the obvious. I deal with them daily. What seems like common sense to you may be a foreign language to someone else.
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.
I'm so sorry you had to go through all that and I apologize for the appalling behavior you experienced from people from the United States. I do my very best to be courteous with people working in customer service since I've had that job before too. Not being angry and cursing at people and being pleasant to work with is a simple way to make someone's day better and I wish everyone would do the same
Honestly it's a soul crushing job in any country, dealing with any customers. My ex-girlfriend used to work in a call centre for a charity for dogs. The abuse she would get with move her to tears. And she wasn't asking for donations, she was just routing calls and bills and stuff.
Yeah man, call center jobs are fucking horrible. I used to work at one myself, work from home. You'd think since it was work from home it'd be good but NO, it was soul crushing. Ended up quitting less than two months in.
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.
Sometimes wish I had been born a bit earlier and could have experienced that myself. I was born at the tale end of 89 so effectively a 90's child and we couldn't afford a computer until the late 90's I think, possibly later. I think my first personal machine ran Win98 and I remember having learned some keyboard shortcuts from using a computer at a friends house before that (his mouse was broken). Now I own a few computers but mostly use a Win10 machine, if compatibility improves (mostly for games/graphics cards) I may switch to some form of Linux (probably something Debian based as I have some experience with it).
Right there with you. I was completely self-taught and was a killer trouble-shooter, especially with hardware. I once fixed the PC for one of the VP's at Nortel (Richardson, Texas) that 7 "upper floor" techs had been scratching their heads for 3 days. I was a roving tech and the sole hardware certified one. After hearing the desktop would not POST, I took the case apart and found the biggest dust bunny on the CPU heatsink (no fan) that I have ever seen. Pulled out my vacuum and killed that lil' bugger. I then popped off the heatsink, removed the CPU and palmed it (all pins touching the palm of my hand), with no grounding strap, mind you. Needless to say, all 7 of those techs were freaking out. I calmly reinserted the CPU, reapplied the heatsink, put the case back on, then said, "Watch this....your PC is fixed" as it POST and booted up the OS. Dumbfounded, they asked in amazement, "How did you do that?" I just responded, "I used magic" and then walked off without saying another word. From that day forth, I was known by them as the 'Tech god'. :)
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.
Oh man I got my first computer in 94. I was 12 years old and I had America online version 2.0. Windows 3.1. And a 28.8 k modem. and giving all the technology we have today I'm telling you right now I would much rather go back to those days because simpler times were better. That's a great story by the way.
ChrisS82 Plus, we had (some) privacy back then. No social media, linking our personal profiles to everything we do online. Data harvesting was much less invasive. I miss those days too.
"Please look for a little blue sticker on the front of your tower that says *Intel* on it." *sounds of what I can assume someone tipping over a shelf of computers and subsequently falling down the emergency stairwell in a high-rise building*
I had a customer who was wondering why her internet wasn't working. When I asked her where her modem was she told me she hid it in her cupboard (unplugged), because she was worried that someone was going to steal it....
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.
Yep, I've also had to deal with namings like: the tower? You mean the console? Or no that's the modem.... And at one point where you need to go to the modem, the don't even konw what it is or what it does...
@@ElderX2007 how do people spend so much money on something and not know what it is? like, would you buy a car and be like, "oh the groceries are in the tractor"
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.
I was at a bar a bit back and a comcast agent made a scene. He apparently worked from home and verified all the awful stuff that's already been reported in a loud less-then-sober outburst that actually silenced the place. It turned into a Q&A session since locals also had comcast. It was kinda surreal with people raising their hands and the bartender rolling with it and picking people out for the questions. (Which makes sense since he was the one that started the question spree.) Then someone asked what was he doing at a bar if his pay was so low: "This is my rent $$$." And that was the end of the Q&A.
I worked tech support and we had a guy who did the same thing he'd say: "is your computer running slow at all?" to which the answer was always YES. He'd get them to start the scan disk/defrag process and to call him back. He was a genuine dog-f***er.
@@Johnny_Nitro worked at an ISP tech support center, and we had one tech that would go out of his way to make every issue a windows issue on their end. everything from screwing with the system32 folder to having people download viruses. was fun when you get one of his calls when they came back. also got found out and fired for it.
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.
This is why I miss the days of the Turbo button on the front of the machine. It wasn't just there for aesthetics. Granted, some games were still unplayable because their timing operated through a different function, but I was able to keep playing several older games on a newer machine. If only I had known back then that retro computers would be a thing now - I would have hung on to some of that old hardware. ruclips.net/video/p2q02Bxtqds/видео.html
It didn't changed anything over the years and wont change till the market will collapse. You buy a high end gaming PC today and in two months becomes completely irrelevant. Because someone made a new game that looks "pretty" while lacking in everything else nut that is a story for another day. That is why I respect the old saying PC is for work only and consoles are for actual gaming. The only era that made me have a relevant PC for a longer period then usual was a Pentium 4 back in 2005 and it lasted maybe two years then games started drastically change requering far more power. After that onwards buying a gaming PC was and is still a nightmare. Especially the incopatibilities and crashes. All I say I stop investing and good riddance. Who ever praises PCs as a gaming platform are ignorant masochists who have insane amount of money to trow away on pointless things.
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.
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.
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've been pronouncing my name all this time! It isn't Chris, it's ch-ris. What other lies have I accepted as fact? Gif isn't pronounced as jif, it's pronounced like gift without the t.. Or have I just inadvertently blown the universe's mind while destroying my own name?? :O ffs don't you dare phonetically define an acronym that makes sense so help me!!! Giraffe is the only way one could ever explain GIF so help me bacon!!! Don't tell me that my name also is pronounced similarly to krispy kreme.. I can't handle the mindsplotions!
I had that so many times in real life from customers. In my software exam we were not allowed to use any key statement in programming but told to display " press a key ". that still gave issues but atleast they press the "a" key and carried on. "Slam your head on the keyboard " more like it should have said.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Customers that have no clue but expect you to be able to understand their exact problem through osmosis and cuss you out when you ask for details are pretty bad.
and this is why i got out of the biz. It's not just the general public either. I had a company call me to do a service call for them. Drove 33 miles, opened up her computer (they gave me a work order to replace the cpu) noticed the on/off switch was broke. Got out a piece of wire grounded the two together and boom computer booted. I told the lady to call the company back and tell them she didn't need a 500 dollar cpu just a 5 dollar on/off switch and tell them i will never work for them again. (this was the fourth such error in a row). I've had personal customers who have done the opposite of what I've told them to do so they won't lose the printers on their network (to cheap to upgrade and to stupid to listen) they are also a case of "this is my last visit". The IT guy who replaced me called me a few times to ask if they did these things frequently, all i could do was tell him to get used to both of the ladies who owned that rental management business were crazy. I've had enough of the general public since 1998 thanks!
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
@@gabriel2005k5 Eu sei que cheguei atrasado nos comentários, mas a foto foi em 2008, pelo nome da campanha no Google achei, era do DETRAN-RJ agauu.blogspot.com/2008/09/campanha-do-detran-rj-mobiliza-as_23.html
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.
"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
@@buttnutt well, in one of David's video's like this, you can barely hear sounds from the audience. In that video, david amplifies the audio from his microphone audio in post video production so that we can hear what is being asked.
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.
It’s not actually true - the tech support first line may not know shit, but the customers still do *not* know more, on average. And yes, the scripts that first line tech support uses are now so good that they’re automating away the person between the scripts and the phone.
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
@@johnkean6852 maybe, but a little after I worked voluntarily whit him and whitness some of that stories and knew a person (about 50 yo at that time) who thought that the cd drive was in fact a cup holder. Even worst, on 1998 the younger brother of a friend put a T-Shirt on an inkjet printer, I had to tear it down to take out the shredded fabric🤦🏻♂️, believe or not I managed to fix the printer, but the cartidges were ruined
@@zzmanolozz l'm old but not that stupid ... in fact l have to show some youngies how to turn on their iPhones. There are some idiots around young and old. I have seen some weird goings on in my time too and heard some unbelievable quotes from people: "We've got a computer now, so glad - l hate doing household chores." "If l hold this contract up to the monitor will it scan _clearly?_ " "Cover the monitor - l've just got these trousers back from the dry cleaners and l'm changing." We had the same when TV came on the market: "l can't smell the scent off that washing powder and that woman says it smells of roses." "That Bisto gravy smells like $#!7 . Glad l can make my own gravy." Whilst it's their gravy they can smell cooking in the next room. How we laughed ....🤣
I should probably point out that the job I had before was in sales, selling amongst other things AST advantage computers , and yes my first PC was a AST 611 .(and other than the Cyrix 5x86 showing as a 486 , it was pretty decent)
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.
Used to work for Dell's tech support. Had an old lady call in about her Packard Bell. She couldn't understand why I insisted she call some other number instead of helping with her computer.
@@nstg8 no Im in the UK, we did support for the uks biggest technology retailer (they have/had a few brands). We did all computers they sold, but I was on a pure PB team :(
I now we have something in our pockets that is 1000 times more powerful and most people use them to browse social media only, and use it as a calculator.
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.
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?"
It’s funny that you say this. My first laptop was an AST advantage explorer 486 dx4 100... pretty badass but after multiple closing of the screens... the screen died. So I ripped the monitor off and just connected to my p-bell monitor. So I actually had a half-ast
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 🤣😂
Nevermind the 90s. This is still a near daily occurrence for me. Doing system administration (which unfortunately includes tech support since we emulate dumb terminals for most everything) for a large manufacturer and we get at least 4 or 5 calls a week from the floor saying their computer won't turn on. After 10 minutes of the most meaningless and nonsensical conversation you can imagine, you walk out into the 250k sqft factory to find out they didn't turn on the "Wi-Fi box"(PC) because we wired that work station with cat5e yesterday so they don't need it and they've just been turning the monitor on and off. Yeah we just left that there for decoration and we really like it when there's shit in your way, you don't need that at all. Plenty of "it won't connect to the mainframe, it says 'no network connection' " etc. No, that says no video signal, but who can be bothered with technicalities when there's work to be ignored. By far my best story was someone who threw away a tower that was in their way leaving the keyboard and monitor completely unplugged. And swore it worked for two days like this and just started disconnecting from the network and that it had just been working before they called. Refused to accept when I found the tower and reinstalled it that that had been the issue because their computer at home was "just a screen and a keyboard it worked fine." I've never had a more ridiculous argument than this in my life. We had to agree to disagree after -20- minutes and I got maintenance to bolt the tower to the table. So don't fear, tech support is probably still the most ridiculous and unnecessarily necessary job a person can have.
@Howard Black Pretty much, yeah. Funny as hell when you get there to see they did this: Ccolonbackslashcd windows Then I started telling them which keys on the keyboard to use :P
Just feel glad you didn't cut your teeth on remote support in Europe for a multinational. Not only could your caller not speak 'computer', they might only have a very basic grasp yours plus the computer itself is in another language and the keyboard is different.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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! :(
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.
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.
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.
I used to work in a retention team for a UK isp tiscali which then got bought by talktalk. Our tech support be it 1st or 2nd line were Mumbai based and useless and most the time we were the ones helping with the tech. It can be hard work especially with the older generation and their love for British telecom .
@@HA05GER Had an old school modem (not a router) guy was stood at the top of the stairs pointing the rj11 cable at the filter in the master socket at the bottom of the stairs. Had another guy entombe his router and pc base unit in a plaster board alcove so he didnt have to look at them, subsequently not having access to the device to run diagnostics, he had just wallpapered the plaster board. These were middle aged people.
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.
I also work in a call center where the english comprehension of our own staff gets worse with each new batch of employees ☹️ English is their second language, but what the hell is the company doing by not testing their literacy effectively before hiring 😣
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.
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 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.
@@Ev11nroo Apple iMacs have been this way forever and there was Windows XP machines built by Compaq and Packard Bell that also had terrestrial TV receivers built in that almost never worked
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. :)
The last place I worked was taken over by a company obsessed with metrics. Why spend hours hunting down the underlying cause of a recurring problem and actually solving it when it can serve as a fountain of tickets that get closed within minutes? I got a panicked phone call one day about a raft of alarms that came in and how we needed to open a conference call, and after explaining at length the exact mechanism which produced them and the process by which I had been investigating them over a period of time, I got the response "what's a _spanning tree?"_
I worked at a place where users could submit help desk tickets on their own, and occasionally they'd submit a hardware or service request as a trouble ticket. Some of these requests could've been classified as projects to procure custom devices and and a development team to make them do what was requested. Since there was no easy way to re-classify it as a service request or project, we had to use the program's dropdown item, "closed without resolution." We would put in the comments that it was a request instead of a break/ fix, however the guys making reports and metrics did not look to see why they were not resolved. We did get better software and trained the users on how to decide if their issue is with something they have or if it's with something they want, however by that time the decision makers decided to outsource the help desk.to a dedicated call center.
God yes. One place used "third call resolution", which meant customers were fobbed off twice, spent at least 20 minutes coming through the queue each time, only to be told to reboot or try an init string to test on their own before caling back. One of the teams I worked on were very particular about this - sometimes taking no notes on the customer (meaning they could dodge the third call thing) and always getting the best stats - and the end of the month kudos. I swore I'd never work in support again after that place.
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
"Ma'am, please calm down. Your CD tray is not a cupholder. I cannot help you clear your browser cache. No, I am not in India." -Homestar Runner, in my brain, when I saw the thumbnail
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.
I wonder if that was the same machine that Clint from LGR showed in his recent video about the "Giant Computer Warehouse" when he and a few others visited Computer Reset? One of the other tech guys had that system at home running Tetris.
I found a link to the disk image here: pdp-11.org.ru/~form/rtgames/ There's also a download for a tool to remap the VT-52 terminal to something better.
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!"
your tales were awesome, great job really entertaining. You definitely right when the consumer allot of time knows more then the technical support side and sometime leads to allot of frustration. It happen once in a while (like once every 2 years) that I get someone really knowledgeable and it surprise me every time.
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!
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!
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! 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Used to work with one guy, who had most of the call center terrified of him. He'd constantly be stabbing his pen into the wall of his slot (by the mid-2000s, you couldn't call them cubicles anymore, although the place I did commercial support at did have cubicles, examples of lots of devices we supported to test on, a lab network with all the servers we supported interfacing our system too, it was great) while talking to customers. He didn't take well to dealing with stupid people. His other job was as a university-level calculus TA. He viewed it as a key job function to get people not smart enough for calculus to drop the course. He tended to succeed. Normally, we both worked in chat support, so he needed to be typing and mousing to use the chat interface with all of the canned phrases that speed along things so you can work at least two calls at once (three or four if your very good and/or cocky) so he couldn't stab the wall while doing that.
that’s another way to see it I was actually saying that today’s tech support is too dumb to answer any questions but yes, actually calling some stranger is absolutely out of reach for me
I think now it’s always good to have someone at least in your family or friendship circle that knows in-depth on how computers work or what things do so you get knowledgeable people telling you good and truthful information
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.
Those All-in-one's were called "The Merlin". Worth quite a bit on eBay today especially if you got one of the DX100 CPU's. Lord help you if you got one with a Cyrix cpu..
“We liked these computers, they actually worked.”
-The 8-Bit Guy
😆
Computers that not just start burning like MacBook Pro's
@@Riskteven how about MacBook overpriced, underpowered
@@bengray79 Worst is, they have no professional keyboard since 2016.
We all miss these computers because computers used to be fun to use not anymore. I liked it when we wrote our own programs and we could taylor it to our needs. Now we are forced to accept features we don't need or want. Also when you turn on a machine it's was up and running no waiting and shut down was just a power switch and the machine was actually off and not consuming power. I use pre windows machines at work and they are up and running within a minute. Just program loading and it's not taking time. DOS was good in its time and many still use a DOS computer. In electronics it does many test functions and no update interference.
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.
This warmed my soul.
Do that. We throw those stickers away." I said "they're Post-its! Not "stickers," dummy!". So I had to tell my department that Post-its stacks needed to move to the cubicle desk light so they wouldn't have to recreate the stack frequently.
Whenever I got a new computer, I would build a stack of post-it notes with the machine's serial # or contract #(compaq), so I would just lean over, peel off one prepared Post-it, and I would be ready for the support tech. I passed that little labor saving trick on to my whole department. It got back to the I.T. department & they demanded to know why all the machine's in our department had Post-its stuck to the back of the machine's. I explained it was a labor-saving trick when calling support. I.T.
I used to say stuff like this to “users”
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.
+1 ex call-centre supe likes this comment :D
David: "Surprisingly, he didn’t get fired over that..."
Some person in the audience: *_"WHAT?!"_*
It happened to me a couple times. I immediately came up with the excuse "Sorry my computer has been acting up all day" pretending I was swearing at the computer not them 😏
But yeah that's bad
@@Krullerized If I was the Customer, I would have been a Smart-***** and have said "I thought you were the ones supposed to be fixing these things!"
time stamp?
@@DigiVore.official begins at 42:57, 43:52 if you're impatient
@@patemathic thanks
"Ok I need you to put the windows 98 installation disk into the cup holder"
they'd probably still managed to put it in upside down... or sideways, or covered in something that made it unreadable
I have ran into people that thought it was a cup holder in the past.
Classic
@@Newman81964 Something that is likely to be happening again soon, with optical drives becoming less and less relevant.
@@MartinFinnerup Kid, I want you to insert this thing into that thing.
You mean my frisbee into the drink holder?
It's called a music frisbee but yes.
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...!"
Good observation!
I worked both IT and help desk in college.
It was NOT easy, in fact impossible, keeping Microsoft DOS and Windows users happy.
You think Windows 10 is a nightmare, you haven't tried DOS and Windows 98.
No matter how much they paid for a system, it had large numbers of bugs.
Our UNIX workstation users (SGI, SUN, HP) had the least complaints. Occasionally it would crash.
You must have the patience of a saint..I couldn't even handle supporting my own mother, even though I built the computer she was using...She'd simply *uck it up by downloading crap...I literally had to go to her house (like 2 hours away) to figure out what she had done...And her task bar/TSR's would be PACKED and the computer would be running like a 4.77 mhz, even though it was a 2010-2017 era system...It could take HOURS to get anywhere, and I'd often just have to drop off a spare computer and take hers home with me and work on it over a week or so..Luckily, she had little to no personal data on it, so I could easily re-format the hard drive and re-install everything....But it was a regular problem..I can't imagine having to do that over the phone for strangers..I'd go INSANE...
@@livesimplyandhumbly I was one of those people..I started with a commodore 64 when I was 14 and then a family 286 (Tandy 1000) and then FINALLY, I got my own PC at 25 years of age in 1992-A ZEOS 486 DX2-66MHZ with 16MB Ram and a 15" monitor and my sister saw it (because it was a full tower case) and jokingly accused me of trying to take over the world with it...But, I learned most of what I knew from magazines...I had zero friends, except at work, and NONE of them had computers..And tech support often cost money back then, so I had to figure a lot out on my own...And yes, I learned A LOT just trying to get DOS games to run...Then later, Windows games...Starting really on Windows 95, as that was the "cool" OS...3.1 was weak in comparison-You still had to exit to DOS to play pretty much any decent games...And there was this regular and constant upgrade cycle....Usually the video card every year, maybe 18 months...And the cpu/motherboard/ram and even storage, every 2-3 years or so...AND the original computer system cost me like $2495 or something like that...It was the least expensive computer at that "power" level I could afford and I STILL had to finance it over 3 years.....And of course, right after I bought it, the Pentiums started to come out, but they were like $3500-$4000 and even more...Now, my $2500 computer has 3 hard drives, including an NVME SSD and a 32" monitor and a Core i7-8700K and 16 GIGS of ram...And 200MB cable internet, as opposed to 28.8 to 56K baud modems...I'm FINALLY using a computer I felt I should have had back in 1992...
@@bdphotog6785Easiest way to fix that is to create a separate admin user and remove your mother's administrative permissions. I did this for my mom and I barely hear out of her about it, and she calls you before installing that crapware because she can't.
imagine THAT! being vetted and hired BASED ON ACTUALLY KNOWING how to do your job really well! Just wow!
An honest resume is a good start, but nothing beats real experience
That's how I got my job where I am now. Almost the exact same process, asked a bunch of questions in the interview about how I would fix X or Y and then sent me to the factory where we build these machines for 5 weeks to talk about how they work and how to adjust / diagnose / repair them.
"Competency? In this economy?"
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 😊
Yeah. Most people nowadays don't even know what AST is (or was, actually).
mytwo favorite tech youtubers on one page
Yooo you are here too
Hey Who is this? :D
Hi
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.
The same thing happened to me at university. They had 486 and floppy disk 3.5 and 5.25 floppy. Someone inserted a CD and it was still in their and I was able to take it out.
It was obvious to me that it was not a CD drive.
I didn't even know what that 5.25 floppy drive was until I looked around on the internet or magazines.
Used to work at a software company and during the transition to CDs another common thing was to have the customers insert it into the gap BETWEEN the 3.5 and 5.25 drive. Or when they would get 5.25 disks and had a 3.5 drive they would fold them in quarters and insert it that way. Also had a customer take the 5.25 disc out of the plastic sleeve and insert it into a CD-rom drive. I couldn't help myself one day when the customer called and was trying to install a Windows version of the software on a Dos machine and had them say they had to use the corner office as their cubical didn't have Windows. I was like 'What did you say?', ok, what 'color' is the screen? It's black, ok let me send you the DOS version of the program as we aren't concerned about if you have a view or not.
...I was stupid enough when I was 4 years old with my grandma to mistake floppy drive for disk drive, because I didn't know about the button to open the disk drive, so we both assumed it is supposed to go there... We understood soon enough that it was a mistake, but a little too late😂
I also have to say, that even though we had a floppy drive (I think it was 5 inch one, because how a disk can fit into a 3 inch drive?), I've never seen a 5 inch floppy until I got into my twenties 😂 so maybe it wasn't that bad
What was on ot
The anachronism gives me headache
Wow!!!! A convention talk with good audio!!!
This is definitely a first for the internet.
Hopefully it will catch on.
other than the high pitched tone in the background
Very slight amount of machine noise. Other than that, it's perfect.
You can even hear the questions! Now we've done this, fusion and FTL can't be far away
Probably the first thing he did was soldering a line-out RCA socket and checking sound level from it :)
The CD-ROM tray when he rebooted it retracted and spilled his coffee. I am hysterical rolling on the floor laughing.
True
there was a cupholder like that though XD i dunno if it retracted on it's own I think LGR has a video on that here somewhere.
Don’t laugh. Had a lady call home office section and said she said “I wish to order a new part...I broke my coffee cup holder...can you send one out?” True story 😂
I hate when it retracts on its own.
Thank goodness they now have the ones that you have to physically push back in yourself.
@@eizol568 one of my friends was a phone and PC repair tech for the college I went to; I heard of regular stories where tenured profs were indeed doing exactly this - using the CD-ROM tray as a coffee mug holder, until it eventually broke.
I've now watched this 3 times and it gets better every time. We need a part 2 !
We will after the um...*cough cough*
@@jonathancharron7360 *tosses a rapid test* see you in 15 mins 😂 no coughing 😂
@@DaxtonAnderson 😂😂😂😂🤣
8 bit animation of a campfire with David sitting next to it? Would be cute and fitting
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 have had multiple calls years ago with people complaining the computer didn't work when the power had gone out. "Sorry, I can't tell what it says as the lights are off."
:D classics. Like someone who calls tech support because his keyboard doesn't work. Of course asking if it is plugged in is always answered with yes. The tech support asked him to pick the keyboard up and walk away at least 5m and then ask if they could take the keyboard that far. At that point they finally realised it wasn't plugged in -.-
I saw UPS plugged into extension cord plugged into this very UPS. That Ouroboros-style istallation was made by IT guy after moving computers from one room to another.
I got called out, multiple times, to people saying their computer is unresponsive. Black screen, no reaction to input.
The computer wasn't on.
@@user-bh6ey1ke4n it guy is hella idiot
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.
Ah, so YOU are the guy who sat next to him and told all of your Customers to run Scandisk and Defrag, eh? :)
@@OzzyMoto2K10 BURN!
Wow old technology that still works. Just like the space program if it works don't fix it.
That's why I like the idea of building my own computer. You don't have to have apps you don't use, its just a waste of money and battery power.
Less is better.
I thought the film used a Toshiba laptop? Good to know it was a Grid!
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.
We live in the era of smartphone, and i can assure you, it's still frustrating, the difference is that they pretend to know everything.
@keselekbakiak I've had callers try to tell me how a certain feature of Windows works, and it's almost always readily apparent they've never even thought of using that feature in their life. Computer literacy may be more widespread than back in the '90s, but it's only at the most basic level.
...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 😒
wow people actually would buy a computer for the speaker phone and pay 3000 dollars for it over a 12 dollar speaker phone just wow🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Now i want a LGR Tech Tales episode about AST. FEAT The 8-Bit Guy
YES!! I want that too!
YES PLEASE!!!
That's a great idea.
Yess
Sí!
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
But these where the nineties :)
Yes, this was back in the days when they put the CPUs into the hard drives of course 😉
Heatsink back then where clamp-on on usually quite small, and the heat produced by the CPU was not much (not talking about the "volcano" AMD K5 here).
Even if they didn't apply any new thermal compound after that chances were that those would continue to run for ages.
Friend of mine had an Pentium 75 from Packard Bell with no thermal compound at all (not his fault) and it ran for years.
My Dad's old 25mhz 386 had no heat sink at all. there was a case fan blowing air over it, nothing else.
@@Crazy_Borg the thermal compound was sol as a product that will fit small holes in the petallic cover of the CPU. Those "holes" are microscopics. So if their argument is correct you really don't need a big amount of compound. NOwadays they put so many compound on their CPU that it became another entirly new layer.
I guess if you've paid $3000 for something you may feel like it's worth the effort :)
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."
I had a call like this once doing support for Compaq laptops and desktops back in 2001. I didn't actually work for Compaq, this was The Answer Group, a contracted support company in Florida.
Anyway, dude calls up because his laptop isn't charging. He has it on his desk and the little battery indicator light just blinks and turns off, because the battery is dead. Ask him if the thing is plugged in and the guy legit checked. He said he was looking at the plug in the power strip (which was on) and the other end was plugged into the laptop. The power brick actually had its indicator light on.
I was about to send him out a new AC adapter when he traced the cord and found that his fucking rabbit chewed through the cord from the power brick up the back of the desk to the laptop. He swears and hangs up the phone.
I was nice. I sent him a new one anyway.
@@Clean97gti You sir are a saint let no one else tell you otherwise.
Barnes Jamie I truly agree.
You are good people.
oh, that's the reason tutorials online say you need the program installed!
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!
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.
The HID controller is not working properly. Best one I've heard.
There he was, the Bastard Operator from Dell.
@@smellcaster ahh, those were the guys from Mumbai.
I have been sorely tempted to tell some of my callers that the problem was PEBKAC.
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
did she think batteries last forever
lmfao
I had a customer who purchased a desktop PSU call me saying it was DOA. Turns out he thought it was a battery and didn't plug it in. I have hundreds more stories of things like this.
I try so hard to put myself in their position, but some of these stories just don't make any sense. Wouldn't the instructions have shown her the battery has to be recharged? Ugh.
@@cvbabc People are stupid and will go to great lengths to ignore the obvious. I deal with them daily. What seems like common sense to you may be a foreign language to someone else.
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.
problema
I'm so sorry you had to go through all that and I apologize for the appalling behavior you experienced from people from the United States.
I do my very best to be courteous with people working in customer service since I've had that job before too. Not being angry and cursing at people and being pleasant to work with is a simple way to make someone's day better and I wish everyone would do the same
Honestly it's a soul crushing job in any country, dealing with any customers. My ex-girlfriend used to work in a call centre for a charity for dogs. The abuse she would get with move her to tears. And she wasn't asking for donations, she was just routing calls and bills and stuff.
Yeah man, call center jobs are fucking horrible. I used to work at one myself, work from home. You'd think since it was work from home it'd be good but NO, it was soul crushing. Ended up quitting less than two months in.
This is one job I'm happy to get replaced by an A.I. with
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.
Sometimes wish I had been born a bit earlier and could have experienced that myself. I was born at the tale end of 89 so effectively a 90's child and we couldn't afford a computer until the late 90's I think, possibly later. I think my first personal machine ran Win98 and I remember having learned some keyboard shortcuts from using a computer at a friends house before that (his mouse was broken). Now I own a few computers but mostly use a Win10 machine, if compatibility improves (mostly for games/graphics cards) I may switch to some form of Linux (probably something Debian based as I have some experience with it).
Right there with you. I was completely self-taught and was a killer trouble-shooter, especially with hardware. I once fixed the PC for one of the VP's at Nortel (Richardson, Texas) that 7 "upper floor" techs had been scratching their heads for 3 days. I was a roving tech and the sole hardware certified one. After hearing the desktop would not POST, I took the case apart and found the biggest dust bunny on the CPU heatsink (no fan) that I have ever seen. Pulled out my vacuum and killed that lil' bugger. I then popped off the heatsink, removed the CPU and palmed it (all pins touching the palm of my hand), with no grounding strap, mind you. Needless to say, all 7 of those techs were freaking out. I calmly reinserted the CPU, reapplied the heatsink, put the case back on, then said, "Watch this....your PC is fixed" as it POST and booted up the OS. Dumbfounded, they asked in amazement, "How did you do that?" I just responded, "I used magic" and then walked off without saying another word. From that day forth, I was known by them as the 'Tech god'. :)
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.
reminds me of Scotty during the star trek movie a voyage home I think..
@@sheilaolfieway1885 "Hello, Computer!" xD
@@katho8472 "Use the keyboard" Scotty: How quaint"
Oh man I got my first computer in 94. I was 12 years old and I had America online version 2.0. Windows 3.1. And a 28.8 k modem. and giving all the technology we have today I'm telling you right now I would much rather go back to those days because simpler times were better. That's a great story by the way.
ChrisS82 Plus, we had (some) privacy back then. No social media, linking our personal profiles to everything we do online. Data harvesting was much less invasive. I miss those days too.
26:59 - "This is how inept customers were at the time."
What do you mean AT THE TIME!?
Nowadays Things are more foolproof so the Universe created adequate Fools to conquer this. Seems like the Universe is ahead of the Curve right now.
I would say that now they are even worse because they think that they are smarter than you so they do even dumber things.
"Please look for a little blue sticker on the front of your tower that says *Intel* on it."
*sounds of what I can assume someone tipping over a shelf of computers and subsequently falling down the emergency stairwell in a high-rise building*
Fucking preach it, I still get customers like this all the damn time
I had a customer who was wondering why her internet wasn't working. When I asked her where her modem was she told me she hid it in her cupboard (unplugged), because she was worried that someone was going to steal it....
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.
oh man the number of people who STILL call their computer a "hard drive" or "CPU"
Teachers in my school call desktops, CPU unit, annoying because one of the teachers who do this teaches us IT.
@@berownik1246 that's inexcusable. the more i hear about this "School" place, the less I like
K
Yep, I've also had to deal with namings like: the tower? You mean the console? Or no that's the modem.... And at one point where you need to go to the modem, the don't even konw what it is or what it does...
@@ElderX2007 how do people spend so much money on something and not know what it is? like, would you buy a car and be like, "oh the groceries are in the tractor"
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.
Yep.
I was at a bar a bit back and a comcast agent made a scene. He apparently worked from home and verified all the awful stuff that's already been reported in a loud less-then-sober outburst that actually silenced the place. It turned into a Q&A session since locals also had comcast. It was kinda surreal with people raising their hands and the bartender rolling with it and picking people out for the questions. (Which makes sense since he was the one that started the question spree.) Then someone asked what was he doing at a bar if his pay was so low: "This is my rent $$$." And that was the end of the Q&A.
I worked tech support and we had a guy who did the same thing he'd say: "is your computer running slow at all?" to which the answer was always YES. He'd get them to start the scan disk/defrag process and to call him back. He was a genuine dog-f***er.
@@Johnny_Nitro worked at an ISP tech support center, and we had one tech that would go out of his way to make every issue a windows issue on their end. everything from screwing with the system32 folder to having people download viruses. was fun when you get one of his calls when they came back. also got found out and fired for it.
@@Johnny_Nitro hey don't insult dog-f***er's, they are good people.
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.
Ha, you should have been seen the 1980's prices fell while the computer doubled in speed or memory.
This is why I miss the days of the Turbo button on the front of the machine. It wasn't just there for aesthetics. Granted, some games were still unplayable because their timing operated through a different function, but I was able to keep playing several older games on a newer machine. If only I had known back then that retro computers would be a thing now - I would have hung on to some of that old hardware. ruclips.net/video/p2q02Bxtqds/видео.html
That explains Weird Al's "It's All Bout the Pentiums" lines on if you had your desktop for over a week, then throw it away because it's an antique.
Wow. What an amazing time it was🤔
It didn't changed anything over the years and wont change till the market will collapse. You buy a high end gaming PC today and in two months becomes completely irrelevant. Because someone made a new game that looks "pretty" while lacking in everything else nut that is a story for another day. That is why I respect the old saying PC is for work only and consoles are for actual gaming. The only era that made me have a relevant PC for a longer period then usual was a Pentium 4 back in 2005 and it lasted maybe two years then games started drastically change requering far more power. After that onwards buying a gaming PC was and is still a nightmare. Especially the incopatibilities and crashes. All I say I stop investing and good riddance. Who ever praises PCs as a gaming platform are ignorant masochists who have insane amount of money to trow away on pointless things.
That AST history lesson really just heavies the heart.
did you try turning it off and back on again?
[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!
Don't come to this channel then.
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.
Good catch.
Não seja irracional no trânsito.
Also
Achados e perdidos
Boa!
Sim! Bem observado! ;)
The reason is India went over there, sawed off Brazil and took it home to India to make use of it in call centers :D
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 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.
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.
Hahaha omg I bet the student was upset when the floppy no longer worked after ruining it
sounds like a pub story to me.
"Your brain ran into a problem and needs to restart."
I love the confidence with which he mispronounces "chimera."
Kimera
I've been pronouncing my name all this time! It isn't Chris, it's ch-ris. What other lies have I accepted as fact? Gif isn't pronounced as jif, it's pronounced like gift without the t.. Or have I just inadvertently blown the universe's mind while destroying my own name?? :O ffs don't you dare phonetically define an acronym that makes sense so help me!!! Giraffe is the only way one could ever explain GIF so help me bacon!!! Don't tell me that my name also is pronounced similarly to krispy kreme.. I can't handle the mindsplotions!
Customer: "Where's the 'any' key ?"
😂😂😂
My dad would not stop.using that joke
Customer: Presses the Power Button
Next to the button that says "self destruct user".
I had that so many times in real life from customers. In my software exam we were not allowed to use any key statement in programming but told to display " press a key ". that still gave issues but atleast they press the "a" key and carried on. "Slam your head on the keyboard " more like it should have said.
I love how much he is enjoying himself. Amazing talk!
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.
"you clicked on this video to see my tech support tales" yeah well true, but i also wanted to see the retro gaming expo
For some reason I wanted to watch the whole video :-) because I like the way he talks
Well... he did say "probably"... 😂
Probably did that before or one of his friend RUclipsrs did.
I didn't know I wanted that until i came
I’m still stuck at 2:20 for some reason.
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.
"Press Escape" and "Run"...
That has happened many, many times.
Reminds me of the live action "Rocky and Bullwinkle" movie.
imagine if she receive order to "burn" some dics.
That "copying a floppy disk" story caught me so hard XD
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.
Pronounced like Kimberley by the way.
USA speech b@st@rdising perfectly serviceable English speech as per normal. 💩
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.
Proud. So proud. I bet ur dad secretly admired the great work that you figured out. Did you ever tell them how you did it
I have no idea what youre trying to say.. horrid english...
@@adamkatt Then you are illiterate. Horrid reading or comprehension skill. You need to learn.
@@rysterstech At least can feel succesful in getting the kid to wake up in time.
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.
How did the cat fit in the air vent?
@@SenshiSunPower You'd be surprised.
Customers that have no clue but expect you to be able to understand their exact problem through osmosis and cuss you out when you ask for details are pretty bad.
and this is why i got out of the biz. It's not just the general public either. I had a company call me to do a service call for them. Drove 33 miles, opened up her computer (they gave me a work order to replace the cpu) noticed the on/off switch was broke. Got out a piece of wire grounded the two together and boom computer booted. I told the lady to call the company back and tell them she didn't need a 500 dollar cpu just a 5 dollar on/off switch and tell them i will never work for them again. (this was the fourth such error in a row). I've had personal customers who have done the opposite of what I've told them to do so they won't lose the printers on their network (to cheap to upgrade and to stupid to listen) they are also a case of "this is my last visit". The IT guy who replaced me called me a few times to ask if they did these things frequently, all i could do was tell him to get used to both of the ladies who owned that rental management business were crazy. I've had enough of the general public since 1998 thanks!
@@davidmiller9485 could you do the task assigned plus the power switch, then take away the "dud" CPU and sell on eBay?
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
Putz eu não tinha reparado nisso
Krl tem fas br do 8 bit guy krl
@@datavalisofficial8730 ae poha, KKKSKSKSKSSK
@@gabriel2005k5 Eu sei que cheguei atrasado nos comentários, mas a foto foi em 2008, pelo nome da campanha no Google achei, era do DETRAN-RJ
agauu.blogspot.com/2008/09/campanha-do-detran-rj-mobiliza-as_23.html
bom achar outros BRs por aqui :)
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.
It says EVERYTHING ON THE SCREEN WILL BE FAXED!
Damn that one was EPIC.
ProbeGT2 lmao.
Saw it coming 🤣
I remember doing something similar but I was 5 and realised my mistake without asking for help.
I was speechless, but then my upbringing kicked in and I remembered you're not supposed to make fun of the intellectually disabled.
Back in those "early" days of Windows every new concept to customers was baffling, so yeah it was quite plausible.
ok, this video was definitely worth the 48 minutes of my time.
Keep up the good content.
I only spent 24 minutes on twice the speed.
I was at Blizzard's headquarters in Irvine, CA. It's interesting that used to be AST's HQ!
"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
it was funny though!
The audio is purely from his microphone. It's not picking up the sounds of the audience.
lol do we need to learn how microphones work? hahaha.
@@buttnutt well, in one of David's video's like this, you can barely hear sounds from the audience. In that video, david amplifies the audio from his microphone audio in post video production so that we can hear what is being asked.
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.
2030s: Tech support is just AI while customers are essentially tools of their own computers
Well, its 2019 and we already got the 2020s stuff, just with indians trying to scam you
It’s not actually true - the tech support first line may not know shit, but the customers still do *not* know more, on average.
And yes, the scripts that first line tech support uses are now so good that they’re automating away the person between the scripts and the phone.
2040s: The customers become the techsupport
But you have to pay them with gift cards.
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"
i really hope that didnt change anything
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
A friend of mine (RIP) worked as a support guy on the University and he told me almost the same stories at early 90's
Suburban myths then 🤔
@@johnkean6852 maybe, but a little after I worked voluntarily whit him and whitness some of that stories and knew a person (about 50 yo at that time) who thought that the cd drive was in fact a cup holder. Even worst, on 1998 the younger brother of a friend put a T-Shirt on an inkjet printer, I had to tear it down to take out the shredded fabric🤦🏻♂️, believe or not I managed to fix the printer, but the cartidges were ruined
@@zzmanolozz l'm old but not that stupid ... in fact l have to show some youngies how to turn on their iPhones. There are some idiots around young and old. I have seen some weird goings on in my time too
and heard some unbelievable quotes from people: "We've got a computer now, so glad - l hate doing household chores." "If l hold this contract up to the monitor will it scan _clearly?_ " "Cover the monitor - l've just got these trousers back from the dry cleaners and l'm changing."
We had the same when TV came on the market: "l can't smell the scent off that washing powder and that woman says it smells of roses."
"That Bisto gravy smells like $#!7 . Glad l can make my own gravy." Whilst it's their gravy they can smell cooking in the next room.
How we laughed ....🤣
I should probably point out that the job I had before was in sales, selling amongst other things AST advantage computers , and yes my first PC was a AST 611 .(and other than the Cyrix 5x86 showing as a 486 , it was pretty decent)
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.
Yup, they didn't check it before because it was a pain to get under there, and they (thought they) _knew_ it was plugged in.
My dad works in hospital tech support also. One time someone’s computer wasn’t working well the power strip was plugged into its self not the wall.
Former Packard Bell technician, watching this video has triggered my ptsd
Former Packard Bell customer, same.
Used to work for Dell's tech support. Had an old lady call in about her Packard Bell. She couldn't understand why I insisted she call some other number instead of helping with her computer.
My dad did tech support for Packard Bell, were you at the call center in Colorado?
@@nstg8 no Im in the UK, we did support for the uks biggest technology retailer (they have/had a few brands). We did all computers they sold, but I was on a pure PB team :(
Oh my god! I dreaded getting through the gates to the call centre. Worked there around 2004
Back then ALL computers cost $3,000 ;)
I now we have something in our pockets that is 1000 times more powerful and most people use them to browse social media only, and use it as a calculator.
@@jackkraken3888 its not my fault my phone sucks at running animal crossing wild worlds
3000$ back then (1990) would be 9000$ of today.
Which about twice that in today's currency!
@@obfuscated3090 :
It's more than twice. It is somewhere between 2.5x to 3x.
So your 3000$ PC of 1990 is about 9000$ in today's money (2019).
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.
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?"
Lol, that last line got a chuckle out of me!
What do you call an AST laptop after the screen has broken off?
A half AST laptop.
It’s funny that you say this. My first laptop was an AST advantage explorer 486 dx4 100... pretty badass but after multiple closing of the screens... the screen died. So I ripped the monitor off and just connected to my p-bell monitor. So I actually had a half-ast
I was hoping you would say "pAST"
Half ast edit** oh I didn't see the rest. That was below read more
meekness a serious good meek game was the most fun ipun
And the other name for it is "desktop".
Seriously. I knew people with broken laptop screens who just used them with a monitor.
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 🤣😂
Nevermind the 90s. This is still a near daily occurrence for me. Doing system administration (which unfortunately includes tech support since we emulate dumb terminals for most everything) for a large manufacturer and we get at least 4 or 5 calls a week from the floor saying their computer won't turn on. After 10 minutes of the most meaningless and nonsensical conversation you can imagine, you walk out into the 250k sqft factory to find out they didn't turn on the "Wi-Fi box"(PC) because we wired that work station with cat5e yesterday so they don't need it and they've just been turning the monitor on and off. Yeah we just left that there for decoration and we really like it when there's shit in your way, you don't need that at all.
Plenty of "it won't connect to the mainframe, it says 'no network connection' " etc. No, that says no video signal, but who can be bothered with technicalities when there's work to be ignored.
By far my best story was someone who threw away a tower that was in their way leaving the keyboard and monitor completely unplugged. And swore it worked for two days like this and just started disconnecting from the network and that it had just been working before they called. Refused to accept when I found the tower and reinstalled it that that had been the issue because their computer at home was "just a screen and a keyboard it worked fine." I've never had a more ridiculous argument than this in my life. We had to agree to disagree after -20- minutes and I got maintenance to bolt the tower to the table.
So don't fear, tech support is probably still the most ridiculous and unnecessarily necessary job a person can have.
@Howard Black Pretty much, yeah. Funny as hell when you get there to see they did this:
Ccolonbackslashcd windows
Then I started telling them which keys on the keyboard to use :P
Just feel glad you didn't cut your teeth on remote support in Europe for a multinational. Not only could your caller not speak 'computer', they might only have a very basic grasp yours plus the computer itself is in another language and the keyboard is different.
I do this and don't even get paid for it.
I've been my family tech support for 30 years. this is how it sounded back then, thought for thought, word for word. holy shit.
I come back to this video every now and then and it brings me such joy. You're the best David.
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.
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.
That convention looks awesome, wish they had that here in Australia
Filamax AVcon in Adelaide has a similar component.
ditroia I wish there was a Melbourne equivalent.
maybe it's harder for them to get used to the situation there in AU because it's on the other side of the earth so everything is upside down.
If only, but I'm stuck in Perth so even if it did it would end up in Sydney and would still cost a ridiculous amount of money to attend lol
I like to visite this too, but I live in Germany and it is too far away!
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.
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.
What a fun presentation! Love hearing stories from the "early" days of computers! Thank you for sharing!!
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! :(
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.
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.
48 minutes of 8bit guy??!! give me a sec to get some snacks, this gonna be good
LM_DCCXL that’s how I feel xd
I just sat down with my dinner and this was in my feed! *win win*
Won't spoiler, but it's totally worth it!
dammit. i knew i forgot something. i forgot the snacks.
I was surprised it finished as time went fast. I think hearing the inside story's of 8bits past is entertaining.
Thoroughly enjoyed this video. Seems like not many of your audience was from our generation.
i was born in th 90's so not really but i grew up when computers were getting better. BACK IN MY DAY.... yeah whatever not going there.
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.
I used to work in a retention team for a UK isp tiscali which then got bought by talktalk. Our tech support be it 1st or 2nd line were Mumbai based and useless and most the time we were the ones helping with the tech. It can be hard work especially with the older generation and their love for British telecom .
@@HA05GER Had an old school modem (not a router) guy was stood at the top of the stairs pointing the rj11 cable at the filter in the master socket at the bottom of the stairs. Had another guy entombe his router and pc base unit in a plaster board alcove so he didnt have to look at them, subsequently not having access to the device to run diagnostics, he had just wallpapered the plaster board. These were middle aged people.
@@gm2407wow that's hilarious but really doesn't suprise me at all some people are very naive to tech 😂
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.
"They were redundant... unnecessary... people just didn't need them anymore"
He has no faith in our vocabulary
Either that or he speaks like Douglas Adams wrote.
You have too much faith in my house training
So what you're saying is that there was some duplication of function that reduced the utility and desirability of the products in question?
I also work in a call center where the english comprehension of our own staff gets worse with each new batch of employees ☹️ English is their second language, but what the hell is the company doing by not testing their literacy effectively before hiring 😣
@@Prizm44 Long-term losses for short-term gains.
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.
"i dont know who would spend $3000 on a speaker phone"
i could see my mom doing something like that.
I've seen that level of pricing on executive speaker phones with fancy geometric designs.
Before long an iPhone will cost that much and it doesn't even have a convenient speaker phone and VoIP system for business use
I mean, people today buy $3000 social media machines like it's all a macbook is for.
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.
The phrase on their t-shirts: "não seja irracional no trânsito" haha
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.
Like being all 9s. Lol.
What I was always astounded by customers calling the monitor "the computer" and the main computer "the hard drive" or "the cpu".
Aaaand by 30:05, there we go. How is it that people that have absolutely no contact with each other can make exactly the same mistake?
i saw a windows 7 machine where the computer is inside the monitor
@@Ev11nroo that would be called an all-in-one
@@TheJaguar1983 t
@@Ev11nroo Apple iMacs have been this way forever and there was Windows XP machines built by Compaq and Packard Bell that also had terrestrial TV receivers built in that almost never worked
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. :)
Here's how I would describe a mouse...
"Its the thing on your desk that looks most like a mouse."
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!
At least he was telling them to defrag and call back. He could have told them to run FDISK and call back. :)
The last place I worked was taken over by a company obsessed with metrics. Why spend hours hunting down the underlying cause of a recurring problem and actually solving it when it can serve as a fountain of tickets that get closed within minutes?
I got a panicked phone call one day about a raft of alarms that came in and how we needed to open a conference call, and after explaining at length the exact mechanism which produced them and the process by which I had been investigating them over a period of time, I got the response "what's a _spanning tree?"_
It sounds like AST management wasn't a fan of the moderate approach. They tended to favor the radical instead.
Their untergang.
I worked at a place where users could submit help desk tickets on their own, and occasionally they'd submit a hardware or service request as a trouble ticket. Some of these requests could've been classified as projects to procure custom devices and and a development team to make them do what was requested. Since there was no easy way to re-classify it as a service request or project, we had to use the program's dropdown item, "closed without resolution." We would put in the comments that it was a request instead of a break/ fix, however the guys making reports and metrics did not look to see why they were not resolved. We did get better software and trained the users on how to decide if their issue is with something they have or if it's with something they want, however by that time the decision makers decided to outsource the help desk.to a dedicated call center.
God yes. One place used "third call resolution", which meant customers were fobbed off twice, spent at least 20 minutes coming through the queue each time, only to be told to reboot or try an init string to test on their own before caling back.
One of the teams I worked on were very particular about this - sometimes taking no notes on the customer (meaning they could dodge the third call thing) and always getting the best stats - and the end of the month kudos.
I swore I'd never work in support again after that place.
"He went off on a customer on that-"
_P A U S E_
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
"Ma'am, please calm down. Your CD tray is not a cupholder. I cannot help you clear your browser cache. No, I am not in India."
-Homestar Runner, in my brain, when I saw the thumbnail
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.
In Soviet Russia, computer programs you!
In fact all Soviet computers was clones. Even processors was copied, so we had own computers, but it was clones assembled on USSR details
I wonder if that was the same machine that Clint from LGR showed in his recent video about the "Giant Computer Warehouse" when he and a few others visited Computer Reset? One of the other tech guys had that system at home running Tetris.
I found a link to the disk image here: pdp-11.org.ru/~form/rtgames/
There's also a download for a tool to remap the VT-52 terminal to something better.
They certainly look like the same machine. I don't recognise the precise model, but there were a lot of different PDP-11 clones around at the time.
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!"
your tales were awesome, great job really entertaining. You definitely right when the consumer allot of time knows more then the technical support side and sometime leads to allot of frustration. It happen once in a while (like once every 2 years) that I get someone really knowledgeable and it surprise me every time.
Thanks, excellent show, your shows have taken me back to the good old days of the 80's and 90's . Thanks
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!
*User:* Hello? -my laptop has melted.
*David:* Have you tried turning it off and back on again?
*Have you tried rebooting the computer?
Maybe running defragment will help if it broke in pieces
Wow thanks, it unmelted
Is it plugged?
Thanks Jan, I got the IT Crowd reference. It appears some have not had the pleasure. LOL
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!
We need a sequel to this !!!
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! 🤣🤣🤣🤣
I got written up multiple times for this... True story. The co workers were not happy. Well some laughed.
I did this too xDDD
Almost as good as the red "hold" button.
Used to work with one guy, who had most of the call center terrified of him. He'd constantly be stabbing his pen into the wall of his slot (by the mid-2000s, you couldn't call them cubicles anymore, although the place I did commercial support at did have cubicles, examples of lots of devices we supported to test on, a lab network with all the servers we supported interfacing our system too, it was great) while talking to customers. He didn't take well to dealing with stupid people. His other job was as a university-level calculus TA. He viewed it as a key job function to get people not smart enough for calculus to drop the course. He tended to succeed. Normally, we both worked in chat support, so he needed to be typing and mousing to use the chat interface with all of the canned phrases that speed along things so you can work at least two calls at once (three or four if your very good and/or cocky) so he couldn't stab the wall while doing that.
have done, will do, will continue to do, luckily I have an office
27:30 Imagine being able to call tech support instead of spending hours on googling why that one rarely used button in the program is greyed out
this post was made by the social anxiety gang
that’s another way to see it
I was actually saying that today’s tech support is too dumb to answer any questions
but yes, actually calling some stranger is absolutely out of reach for me
I think now it’s always good to have someone at least in your family or friendship circle that knows in-depth on how computers work or what things do so you get knowledgeable people telling you good and truthful information
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.
Those All-in-one's were called "The Merlin". Worth quite a bit on eBay today especially if you got one of the DX100 CPU's. Lord help you if you got one with a Cyrix cpu..