David Murray (born: June 25, 1975), better known online as The 8-Bit Guy, is an American YouTuber and game developer for retro home computers. He is known for his videos discussing and repairing vintage electronics from the 1980s-2000s. He joined YouTube on July 25, 2006. David is the brother of Mike Murray who runs The Geek Pub[1].
Beginning[]
Murray was born on June 25, 1975 and grew up in Mansfield, Texas. As a child, he got his first computer, a Commodore VIC-20. He graduated from Mansfield High School in 1993.
Murray was first employed at Mouser Electronics and worked in their technical support from 1994 to 1996. Murray was then employed at AST Research and worked in their technical support from 1996 to early 1997 when AST Research was bought by Samsung. He was retained by Samsung and continued to be employed to them from early 1997 to late 1997 when he and his colleagues were let go due to Samsung closing all of it's American facilities due to competition with other companies and the 1997 Asian financial crisis. From 1997 to 2000, Murray worked at AT&T installing cable modems and from 2000 to 2005, Murray was working at a computer store as a service manager. In 2006, he became employed at FWT in their IT department and worked there until 2017.
Creating adric22[]
David made his YouTube channel on July 25, 2006. At this time, the channel was named adric22 (the combination of his favorite Doctor Who character and his age at the time of coming up with the name in 1997). This is also the same username he uses for his eBay account and various other websites online. He really liked obtaining broken iBook laptops, repairing them, then selling them on websites like eBay and Craigslist. He uploaded his first video onto the channel on March 24, 2007, which was an S-Video mod for the Commodore Amiga. Prior to this, he was involved with another channel, MyPCHelp, from December 2006 to March 2007, that was also run by other members of his family. Later on, in 2008, he made a video explaining his refurbished iBooks and how he was better than the competitors. As time went on, when iBooks became harder to find, he switched to MacBooks for repair and sale.
Becoming TheiBookGuy[]
Sometime in 2010, David changed the name of his channel from adric22 to TheiBookGuy. He did this because he was making more videos about Apple iBooks, and wanted a more fitting username, and YouTube did not support changing of usernames until around this point.
Becoming The 8-Bit Guy[]
In August 2015, he once again changed his username, this time to The 8-Bit Guy, which is what it still is now. He did this because he hadn't made a video relating to iBooks or MacBooks for a few years at that point, and the content on his channel was now focused on 8-bit computers and such.
Working for YouTube full time[]
In January 2017, David announced that he would be quitting his office job and be working on YouTube full time. In February 2017, his final day at the office job came, and after that, he was officially a full time entrepreneur.
Current state[]
Currently, he makes various videos relating to vintage electronics. He'll demonstrate these products, modernize them, restore them to new condition, and various other things. He has no set video making schedule, making videos whenever he can.
On February 19, 2021, David announced that new videos would be put on hold due to a water pipe bursting in his house. A winter storm had hit Texas a few days earlier, and David and his family were forced to evacuate due to a power outage. When David returned to his house after power was restored, he discovered that a pipe had burst due to the subfreezing temperatures and most of the house was flooded. This forced David and his family to move their non-ruined belongings into his newly-built studio building and garage, and David and his family had to temporarily move next door to his mother's house (it was his parents' home, but his father passed in 2019) while the water damage is remediated.
David, his brother Mike, and fellow friend Craig have launched a podcast called GeekBits where they discuss retro computing but also other things they refer to as "off topic" from their main channels. The podcast is available on YouTube, iTunes, Google, and Spotify.
On January 2, 2024, David announced that revenue on his channel had fallen significantly and as such he will reduce the amount of videos he makes, shifting some focus to the X16 project and the rest to a job he took at a local arcade venue in Bedford, TX.
Controversies[]
Does Artificial Intelligence already exist video[]
On April 9, 2017, David uploaded a now-deleted video titled "Does Artificial Intelligence already exist", which caused a lot of backlash as a lot of people interpreted the video as David trying to insinuate a conspiracy that AI may already exist. Another problem about the video which angered people was David claiming to be able to create AI within 20 years. The day after the video was uploaded, the video was deleted, and he addressed the controversy surrounding the video in a post on Patreon.
Cartridges video[]
On May 31, 2017, David uploaded a video titled "Relabelling and Restoring Game Cartridges" where he explored various methods of relabeling tattered ROM cartridges. In the video, he explained his stance on relabelling. The video reignited a controversy among collectors whether or not one should restore vintage cartridges.
Donations[]
On May 2, 2018, David released a video showing the donations he received for the month of April 2018. The donation he received of the Kaypro from Jill Hazlett had cost $82 to ship and it had a note mentioning the original owners of the Kaypro 2000 (Paul and Jeanne Catalano) and David did nothing to commemorate or mention the passing away of the original owners, which angered many people, and the previous owner proceeded to rant about that in the comment section of that video. David later apologized, stating that he forgot to mention their names.
Building a new studio video[]
On September 12, 2020, David released a video where it was Part 1 of him building a new studio. During construction, the electrician for the new studio came over to run a conduit between the house and studio to deliver electricity. In that video, he commented "I didn't expect Morgan Freeman would be my electrician". While some viewers enjoyed the joke, others were offended and accused him of being racist. David later removed the offensive comments.
IBMgate[]
On September 25, 2020, David released a video where he finds a rare IBM 7496 workstation computer at Computer Reset, a large computer warehouse in Dallas. While attempting to diagnose the computer, he bridged a proprietary connection on the power supply using a paperclip in an attempt to turn the computer on without the monitor, causing a short circuit. While diagnosing the power supply, David took a rotary tool in order to defeat the security screws in order to take the cover off, which resulted in gouges on the cover. Both actions drew significant criticism to the point where David disabled comments on that particular video. Some people referred the IBM controversy as "IBMgate".
During the IBM controversy, some people unearthed his abandoned awesomeairguns channel and it's associated videos. While some of the videos were controversial, the most controversial one was a 2013 video where he and thousands of other Texans were opening carrying automatic rifles to protest a Texas law.
On October 1, 2020, David released an unlisted follow-up video named "Response to angry mob about IBM workstation and other issues." In it, he apologized for the rushed and botched IBM 7496 restoration. He said that he had been working on a secret project with Activision that involved Tandy 1000's and that he wanted to release something to make up for the lack of videos. He did defended himself by stating that the paperclip technique he used had worked in the past for other machines and that he didn't have the correct security screwdriver for the machine at the time (he could have order it, but it would have arrived late), and that he would have not released the video had he known how bad it would have been recieved. He also addressed the awesomeairguns situation by stating that the channel was long abandoned for 6 years and that the political views of his that were in the video were not in his main channel because he felt that it isn't right if he were to express them on his main channel to avoid bias. He also mentioned the Morgan Freeman joke from the new studio actually came from the Electrician himself who stated to David that people in the streets would point that out to him. He did promise not to rush repairs and to not try to make any jokes that could offend someone. While some didn't forgive him, most did. Since then, there hasn't been any new controversy.
Subscriber milestones[]
Note: The following dates are according to Social Blade. Dates may vary by one or two days due to differences in time zones.
The 8-Bit Guy[]
- 100,000 subscribers: 2016
- 1 million subscribers: November 26, 2019
8-Bit Keys[]
- 100,000 subscribers (8-Bit Keys): July 19, 2017[2]
Trivia[]
- David's older brother Mike Murray is also a YouTuber and his channel is called The Geek Pub. He also runs the very popular related website TheGeekPub.com. Like David, Mike lives in the Fort Worth area; however, Mike lives in Keller to the north while David lives in Kennedale to the south.
- David and Mike both worked together at Mouser Electronics and AST Computer. Mike becoming employed first, and then getting David a job later. David later reveals that his father-in-law also worked at AST.
- Besides The 8-Bit Guy and 8-Bit Keys, David also has four other channels named Awesome Airguns, The Bullion Channel, Cranial Pasta and MyPCHelp, but they are all abandoned. He abandoned The Bullion Channel and Cranial Pasta because not a lot a people watched the videos on those channels while Awesome Airguns was abandoned because the entire channel got demonetized for featuring airguns. MyPCHelp was previously run by David and other family members from December 2006 until March 2007, which was when he started posting videos to his main channel adric22 (now known as The 8-Bit Guy) instead from then onwards. Mike Murray later made 2 more videos for MyPCHelp in August and September 2007 and since then it has been abandoned.
- David likes to drive electric cars. He has previously owned an Eagle Talon (in which he replaced the engine with an electric motor), a Nissan Leaf, BMW i3, Fiat 500e and a Tesla Model 3. He currently owns a Chevrolet Volt.
- In an episode of 8-Bit Keys covering the Casio Superdrums keyboards, David mentions that he is a second cousin of the late Dimebag Darrell of Pantera. He mentioned this because he had gotten drumsticks from him. [3]
- To make ends meet David currently holds a job as an arcade technician at an arcade venue near his house in Texas.
- His current intro music is called Morning Dew, which was made by Anders Enger Jensen.
- Interestingly, the 8-Bit Guy actually has worked with Anders Enger Jensen before on game projects like Planet X3.
References[]
