AST Research, Inc., later doing business as AST Computer, was a personal computer manufacturer. It was founded in 1980 in Irvine, California by Albert Wong, Safi Qureshey, and Thomas Yuen, as an initialism of their first names. In the 1980s, AST designed add-on expansion cards, and evolved toward the 1990s into a major personal computer manufacturer. AST was acquired by Samsung Electronics in 1997 but was de facto closed in 1999 due to a series of losses. Foundation (1979–1986) AST Research was founded as AST Associates by Thomas C. K. Yuen, Albert C. Wong, and Safi U. Qureshey. All three were immigrants to the United States—Yuen and Wong from Hong Kong and Qureshey from Pakistan. Yuen had met Qureshey while working for Computer Automation Inc. in the 1970s, while Wong was a roommate of Yuen's while they both attended Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, California. All had come to the United States to study engineering. Yuen was the principal founder of AST, proposing the creation of the company in 1979. Before breaking into the manufacture of hardware, Yuen envisioned the company as a computer consultancy firm for large businesses. The three incorporated AST Research with $2,000 of start-up capital in Irvine, California, in July 1980. The company name is an initialism for the three founders' first names. Selecting their initial job titles by drawing straws, Qureshey was named president, Yuen was named treasurer, and Wong was named secretary. AST delivered its first products by the end of 1981. By then, the computer consultancy idea had been abandoned, the company was renamed to AST Research, and the trio were deep into researching and developing expansion cards for the original IBM Personal Computer, which had been released in August 1981. The founders deemed the initial models of the IBM PC to have been equipped with an inadequate amount of RAM and communications capability and so devised a range of expansion cards that provided these features. They are listed in the charter issue of PC Magazine as follows: a series of memory expansion cards, ranging from 64 KB to 256 KB of additional RAM (with parity); a modem card with a phone jack and an RS-232 serial port; two asynchronous serial communication cards, one with a single RS-232 port and the other dual ports; and an advanced serial communication card, featuring two independently programmable RS-232 ports that could be programmed to support