Unboxing and testing a minty AST Advantage 600 series! A lower-end Windows 95 desktop computer from the mid 90s that bundled lots of software and games with a 100MHz Intel Pentium CPU and a whopping… 8 megabytes of RAM. Whee. Let’s get this one up and running for (maybe) the first time!
● LGR links:
https://www.patreon.com/LazyGameReviews
https://www.twitter.com/LazyGameReviews
https://www.facebook.com/LazyGameReviews
● Archived images of the model 622 restoration media:
https://archive.org/details/ast-advantage-600-restore
● ISO image of the Mayo Clinic/Bellybutton disc:
https://archive.org/details/mayo_button
● All background music licensed from:
http://www.epidemicsound.com
00:00 An intro and overview
02:28 AST Research history
05:26 Unboxing the PC!
12:41 The computer itself
14:27 Inside the case, battery check
17:42 A light cleaning
18:02 First power on!
20:49 Windows 95 setup
22:06 AST OEM software
25:10 Hover!
26:05 MIDI music test
26:58 More AST bundled software
28:56 Microphone test – it’s awful
29:21 Fun & Learning…?
29:58 Data disc, AVI files
30:33 Eco: East Africa
32:06 Mayo Clinic
32:57 What is a Bellybutton?
34:20 Welp, lots of things don’t work
35:30 Oregon Trail II
37:13 Raptor Call of the Shadows
39:08 Duke Nukem 3D Atomic Edition
42:04 WinQuake
44:17 Tomb Raider for DOS
46:14 Valuing the undervalued, outro
#LGR #Retro #Computer
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I bought a used P-75 AST Laptop in the late 90s. I called AST Tech support and they sent me a copy of the whole manual for free! It was like 100 pages of photo copies from the manual. That kind of service is totally unobtainable today. 😔
The random guitar on the setup poster for no reason whatsoever 🤣
A little bummed that the auto install deleted the in store demo mode before letting you put in the windows key. Would have been cool to save that.
I used to work on SiS chipsetted computers. Talk about a headache! (SiSoft)
I actually owned one of those keyboards. It was awesome for what I needed up intil 2013~ish. LOVED that click!
2001 was really the end of the future.
Yesterday I got my filthy hands on a 1999 PC. Boy am I going to review and revive it on my channel 🙏 LOVE retro hardware 💪
I miss old school crt style computer screens and old computers
It's shocking how fast standard RAM capacity in this era grow up. 8MB was basically a very low minimum to reasonable use Win 95 (especially with all this bloat!), so quickly in '96 16MB became a standard. But then in 97-98 we had 32 or even 64MB found in "average" configurations! Moore Law was even faster than original back then. Same with processors! Barely 2 years from 96 and we had PII with 300-400Mhz clock speed ith 64MB of RAM.
That being said… it runs weirdly too slow for a P100 – my 486 (also 100Mhz!) run those games similarly, if not even better at the time (except of Quake ofc as it didn't like 486s). But I had 16 (and later 24)MB of RAM, I bet this is the reason (and maybe this L2 cache), especially with all this bloatware.
Maybe I'll spin-up a P100 machine in 86Box to check if it'll run similarly 🙂
Descent! Run it with -640×480 option
I want to go back in time
I remember my mom buying one of these AST box deals back in 1995. It was a pretty identical model to the one seen here, though I think it had a slightly slower processor, maybe a 75 or 90 MHz, and it had a 700 MB hard drive. I remember Mom did opt to have 32 MB of memory installed in her computer. 8 MB was way too little 😅
It did come with a set of matching AST branded speakers, not Labtec. But the rest of the peripherals are the exact same. I have particularly fond memories of that desk microphone, recording a lot of childish things together with the friends I had over at the time.
As for the software it came bundled with, there were some differences for the European market.
It had Encarta 95 as the encyclopedia software, and a fun creation suite for kids called "The Magic Cinema". Like your unit, it had Hover pre-installed
Love that noise the keyboards made back then , really clicky !
I had a mic like that around 2013, but it was black
OMG! I can't believe you got this. This was my first ever computer. I had the older AST advantage 386sx which looked almost identical. Windows 3.1, 4MB RAM I upgraded to 12 using a bridge. 2gb hard drive which I still have. 2x CD Rom, and I upgraded the 14.4 modem to a 28.8. I think it came with Encarta '95 too. I had to buy the monitor separate. I bought a ViewSonic 16.5" Wow.
I was given one of these back in 2002. I think it may have been the same model although I can't be sure but it looks like the AST computer I used to have. It was dog poop slow and I wanted to upgrade the RAM from 8MB to 16MB and could not get any other RAM to work in this machine, it just would not turn on, I tried lots of RAM sticks but the only RAM that would work was the 8MB that it came with. I traded it in for an IBM desktop with slightly better specs. It would have made a good DOS PC today. Back in 2002 people wanted faster machines running Windows 98/2000/XP and the old 486/Pentium 1 machines where everywhere, people were throwing them away.
Ooo what game is that @ 46:55 anyone? (the platformer)
Does Clint have an absolute pitch? Because he was right at 34:03, it was indeed a C-scale
Free win 95 key at 20:59 🙂
Played DESCENT with a joystick on 100 MEGA HERTZ pemtuim in dos , In muliti player phone line hoocked up and. I won it. Dila up HOT SWAPED.
A 3d accelarator at this time on this machine with add on rom? I think would look very good and, Be.
Why don't horizontal they make more computer cases like that anymore?
I remember this! I got this as my second PC back in the day. And I had the overclocked Cyrix Processor on "100Mhz" … Damn I used this crap for years as a poor student ;D
Typical SiS video chip, hardly any software compatibility.
eMachines: "Pathetic."
The eBay guy watching this video: 😰
runs quake slower than the n64