garmin..what was is like?

i remember less than 20 yrs. ago i first heard of garmin because of hand held gps. absolutely the greatest thing to come along for the northwoods. i remember calling for customer support when i was trying to interface my handheld to my pc. 2 guys were on the phone with me for at least 1/2 hour.sounded like a lot of my questions were new to them too. eventually we won. i got the impression i had 2 guys on the phone that maybe had a church basement table set up in the back/storage room of some business and were exercising their passion for electronics, their whole business sitting on that table.wow!
anyone know how/ where it really did start?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garmin#Founding_and_growth

Looks like 20 years ago they had moved somewhat beyond the folding table stage.

boy, it sure does.those guys sure spent a lot of time with me on a gps 12.

They still do spend all the time you need. Even when the answer is in plain English in the manual. Been there done that. Fantastic company.

ColoRv said:

They still do spend all the time you need. Even when the answer is in plain English in the manual. Been there done that. Fantastic company.

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I had just the opposite experience with the Garmin TSO side trying to resolve ?known? GTN-650 problems.

I hear the experimental side is more customer centric.

Carl

100AVD

My first Garmin product I had was the 100AVD that I had installed in a Bell 206BIII in 1988 or 1989.

Steve has me by almost a decade. My first “handheld” Garmin Aviation GPS was the GPSMAP 195

N42AH said:

My first Garmin product I had was the 100AVD that I had installed in a Bell 206BIII in 1988 or 1989.

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My first Garmin was a handheld 55 AVD with a yoke mount (still have it in fact). IIRC I bought it in 1991.