Company · Heritage
Anyone can say "since 1983."
We kept the receipts.
A 1986 catalog. A 1991 magazine ad. The Los Angeles Times in 1992. A decade of Orange County college catalogs listing the courses we taught. This page is the paper trail behind our founding claim — scanned, dated, and public. It even records our original name: long before the cloud, CRC stood for Computer Research Center.
Three years are missing from the top of this archive, so we will say it rather than let you find it: the company dates to 1983, and the oldest document that survived is from 1986. Small firms in the early eighties did not keep archives — what is below is what outlasted four office moves and a change of century.
The clippings
Trade press, local magazines, and one major newspaper — from the era when our name meant peripherals, training, and tune-ups.
CRC Computer Supplies — Computer Peripherals & Supplies Catalog
Spring/Summer 1986
Our first catalog, published as CRC Computer Supplies, a division of Computer Research Center, from Dupont Drive in Irvine. Floppy disks, dot-matrix ribbons, and printer switchboxes — the essentials that kept 1980s offices running. Before the cloud, CRC meant Computer Research Center; the initials never changed.
The Saddleback Magazine
Spring 1991
A vintage ad marking our dedication to the academic sector: IBM, Apple Macintosh, and Compaq hardware, software, and training — with full product support and educational discounts.
Los Angeles Times — 'Computer Checkups Prevent Bugs That Can Stop Work Cold'
October 24, 1992
Bob Duke's Home Office column quotes our founder on preventative care — test for viruses, align the files, check the drive — with tune-ups then priced at $55 to $75. Yousef Alinaghian is photographed at the bench, testing a machine he assembled. We were pitching proactive maintenance a decade before anyone called it managed services.
Irvine Spectrum News — 'Even Regular Folks Are Learning to Build Web Pages'
June 28 – July 2, 1999
With Y2K approaching, the Spectrum News profiled the one-day web design class at Irvine Valley College taught by Yousef Alinaghian, president of Computer Research Center Inc. — students publishing real sites with FrontPage 98, no HTML required.
We taught Orange County its IT
For a decade, our engineers stood at the front of community-college classrooms — Irvine Valley College, Orange Coast College, Rancho Santiago College — teaching the county to build PCs, run Novell networks, and publish its first web pages.
Irvine Valley College
Fall 1993
Our courses that term: How to Build IBM-PC Compatible Computers, AutoCAD Workshop, and Novell Network Management.
Irvine Valley College
Winter 1994
Courses: Novell Network Management, How to Build IBM-PC Compatible Computers, and AutoCAD Workshop.
Irvine Valley College
Winter 1995
Courses: How to Build IBM-PC Compatibles, Excel, Access, Novell Network Management, PowerPoint, AutoCAD, Windows 3.1, and Word for Windows.
Irvine Valley College
Spring 1995
Courses: AutoCAD Workshop, Novell Network Management, Windows 3.1, Excel, Access, Word, and PowerPoint.
Irvine Valley College
Fall 1995
Courses: Excel, Quicken, PowerPoint, AutoCAD Workshop, Internet, Operating Systems, and Networking.
Irvine Valley College
Winter 1996
Winter-term catalog from the year our classroom program hit full stride — PC building, office software, networking, and the early Internet, taught by our engineers.
Irvine Valley College
Spring 1996
Courses: Visual Basic Programming, Novell Network Management, Internet, Windows 3.1, Word, and Excel.
Rancho Santiago College — Community Services Classes
Spring 1996
Our teaching reach beyond Irvine: Rancho Santiago College's Spring 1996 community-services catalog, registration opening January 8, 1996.
Irvine Valley College
Summer 1996
Summer-term catalog — our engineers teaching Orange County the PC, the network, and the brand-new web.
Irvine Valley College
Fall 1996
Fall-term catalog: Macintosh System 7.5 fundamentals, Word, Excel, Windows 3.1 and 95, Access, PowerPoint, Visual Basic, Inside Your PC, Novell Network Management, and Internet.
Irvine Valley College — 1997 Spring Planner
Spring 1997
Courses: Desktop Publishing, Excel, Inside Your PC, hands-on Internet, PowerPoint, Project, Web Page Authoring, Windows 95, Windows NT, and Word.
Irvine Valley College
Summer 1997
Summer-term catalog as the program shifted decisively toward the web — page authoring, Internet, and the tools of the first browser generation.
Irvine Valley College
Fall 1997
Courses: AutoCAD 13, Access, Project, Web Page Authoring, Internet, How to Build and Upgrade Your PC, and Peachtree Complete Accounting.
Irvine Valley College — Corporate and Community Education Programs
Spring 1998
Courses: AutoCAD, Internet, Windows 95, Word 97, and Excel 97 — under IVC's corporate-training banner.
Discovery — Orange Coast College Community Education
Summer 1999
OCC's Discovery catalog: Windows 98, Word 97, Internet, Excel 97, and Create Your Web Site with FrontPage 98.
Irvine Valley College — 'Classes You Take Over the Internet'
Spring/Summer 2000
The cover line says it all. Inside: Creating Web Pages, Advanced Web Pages, Web Graphics, FrontPage 98, Macromedia Flash I & II, Oracle 8, and Database Design — most classes just $63. A decade of teaching ends exactly where the next era begins: online.
The plain version of “since 1983”: the engineer who founded that datacenter, Yousef Alinaghian, still serves as VP of this company — the continuity is a person, not a logo. Same practice, same county, carried forward without interruption.
Why it matters today: the same team that taught this county its networks now runs its private cloud. The full story, 1983 to now →
From Prime minicomputers to a private cloud
The through-line across every clipping on this page is the same: infrastructure people, teaching and supporting the businesses around them. Four decades later that means a Tier III-standard datacenter, a 24/7 security operation, and published pricing.
Meet the people behind it →