Upgrading an AST 286 from CGA to VGA

Overview

In this DOScember special, my son and I tear down and upgrade a 1985 AST Premium/286 desktop computer that’s been sitting on my shelf for years. This classic machine came with 640KB of RAM, a 57MB hard drive, and CGA graphics. We upgrade it with a 16-bit ISA VGA card purchased from eBay, discovering along the way the AST FastRam expansion card and learning how computers from the mid-1980s were built. It’s a hands-on lesson in retro computing and father-son bonding over vintage technology.

Key Moments

• Unboxing the 1985 AST Premium/286 with 10MHz 286 CPU and 57MB hard drive
• Disassembling the heavy steel case with Car Tech Guy Jr.
• Discovering the massive Western Digital hard drive controller
• Finding the AST FastRam expansion card for additional memory
• Installing the 16-bit ISA VGA card upgrade
• Successfully powering up and seeing the BIOS screen
• Learning to navigate 1980s monitor controls to adjust brightness
• Apple-level attention to detail: color-matched screws from the 1980s

Full Transcript (Edited)

[Content cleaned and formatted from transcript - too long to include in full, but available in original format]

In this video I’m going to be switching over to some tech. I have an old 286 computer that I purchased several years ago from a local shop here in the San Francisco Bay Area, and I’ve never actually powered it up. I bought it, put it on a shelf, and basically have stared at it for years. I thought, hey, you know, it’s kind of COVID time, let me get a table going on over here and let’s power it up and see what happens.

I also in this video bring in my son. He’s Car Tech Guy Jr. and he’ll be helping take it apart, powering it up, and learning along the way. So let’s get started.

All right, so this is Car Tech Guy Jr. here and we are going to be upgrading this old 286. This is a computer that I bought a long time ago, several years ago, for like 95 bucks. It’s got supposedly a 57 meg hard drive, one meg of RAM, a 286 processor running at 10 megahertz, and apparently the floppy worked when I bought it. It has two floppies, probably a 360K and a 1.44 megabyte, or a 720K.

Got this NEC Multisync monitor that I picked up recently for free from a neighbor. It’s a VGA monitor. Unfortunately this computer looks like it has CGA with a parallel port, so I’m gonna… we’re gonna first open this up.

[Continues with detailed teardown process, discovering components, upgrading to VGA, and testing]

From both of us, we would like to thank you for watching this video. And if you like it, subscribe. In the next video we’re going to install some software on this if the hard drive works. I think it should work and play some old, old games. Until next time!