the features of AST's PC expansion cards. To keep from posting losses, AST laid off seven percent of the company's 890 employees in July 1986; clandestinely, they also laid plans to introduce a line of PC-compatible computer systems. The AST Premium/286, a clone of the PC/AT featuring an identical Intel 80286 microprocessor, was introduced in October 1986. To make the computer more competitive among a crowded PC compatible market, AST offered the Premium/286 in an optional package that included a discounted laser printer and image scanner, advertised as an inexpensive desktop publishing workstation. AST released an upgraded version of the Premium/286 with the 32-bit Intel 80386 processor—the Premium/386—in October 1987. AST's products for Apple hardware were profitable enough in the interim. In 1986, AST even expanded its Apple support by introducing peripherals for the then-newly released Apple IIGS, with a pair of expansion cards: the SprintDisk 1 MB RAM Disk card and the AST Vision Plus, a real-time video digitizer card. The Vision Plus was eventually sold to Silicon & Software and licensed to Virtual Realities (and sold through LRO and later Alltech Electronics). In 1987 it went on to produce a memory expansion card for the Apple IIGS: the RamStakPlus, a dual RAM/ROM memory expansion card. AST Research also produced for the Macintosh line the Mac286, a pair of NuBus cards containing an Intel 80286 and RAM, allowing a Macintosh to run MS-DOS side by side with its existing operating system. The Premium/286 accounted for half of the company's sales by July 1987, but by the end of the year it was only a meager success for AST at first. In 1987, the company reported a net income of $13 million, less than half the profit they had posted the preceding year. AST had several setbacks in 1987, including flat sales of expansion products and delayed shipments of a peripheral for IBM PCs in June 1987 that was a factor in a canceled stock call the following month. That year, IBM sued AST over alleged trademark infringement of IBM's PS/2 product name occurring in one of AST's print advertisements for RAM, which was settled out of court. In 1988, AST's executives began a reorganization effort to preserve the company. The first initiative was the merging of AST's data communications group into its systems products division. With the nascent OS/2 operating system coming to market that year, co-developed by IBM