Each board could contain up to 1MB, which were installed in 256KB increments. History The System 9000 was developed by IBM Instruments, Inc., an IBM subsidiary established in 1980 that focused on selling scientific and technical instruments as well as the computer equipment designed to control, log, or process these instruments. It was originally introduced as the IBM Instruments Computer System Model 9000 in May 1982. Its long name led to it being referred to as the Computer System 9000, CS-9000, CS/9000, or CS9000. Originally, the CS9000 was available for scientific instrument users, it was not offered to customers who wanted to use it for other purposes. The CS9000 was unsuccessful in this niche; the cheaper IBM Personal Computer was adequate for many instrumentation tasks, and IBM's larger general-purpose computers were used for more demanding tasks. In 1983 IBM began encouraging value-added resellers to sell the CS9000 as an alternative to large computers like DEC Professional and Honeywell Level 6. IBM formally repositioned the CS9000 on February 21, 1984 as a family of computers, renaming it to the System 9000, which consisted of the System 9001 and 9002. The 9001 was a renamed CS9000, which retained its focus on the instrumentation market, while the 9002 was a general-purpose business computer that ran the IBM CSOS or Microsoft Xenix operating systems and supported one to four users. The 9002 was unsuccessful in the business market, due to the lack of business application software support from software developers other than IBM. IBM finally introduced a new model, the System 9003, in April 1985 as a computer-aided manufacturing computer, but it was also unsuccessful. As a result, manufacturing of the System 9000 family was stopped in January 1986, and it remained in limited availability until it was discontinued on 2 December 1986. Reasons cited for the failure of the System 9000 were its poor performance and high price, which led to the IBM PC being used where price was of concern, and to other 32-bit microcomputers being used where performance mattered. IBM closed its Instrument division in January 1987, reassigning the approximately 150 employees that had worked for it to other positions. Reception Noting the obscurity of its 1982 release, BYTE in January 1983 called the System 9000 "IBM's 'Secret' Computer" and stated that it was "in its quiet way, one of the most exciting new arrivals on today's microcomputer scene". The magazine