In Jan 2010, I was contacted by Ken Koswener, who provided the information below about the old S-100 company INdustrial Micro Systems, later IMS International, and later L/F Technologies and Qubix. See this Web page for board documentation and more history.

- Herb Johnson, Feb 4 2010

I saw your posting of documentation and the confusion of the names, so, being a former dealer of theirs, and still a fan of their technology, i hope this helps:

The company started out as Industrial Micro Systems in Orange County, Ca. The company's first product has a motorized X-Y table for automated soldering systems. Across the street from their factory was the original "Byte Shop." One of the people working there was (Dr.) George Morrow, later of Morrow Computers. Morrow asked Industial's owner's Don Lehr and Al Feigan to design an S-100 static memory board, as the current crop were unreliable, and Don and Al came out of General Automation with another engineer, Ray Norda.

The one-up board was so successful that Don and Al came up with an entire line of S-100 boards to market through the Byte Shop and soon needed a larger production facility. They rented a next door factory which was a former sheet metal shop and, so, bought the ability to build its own cabinets, and so, started shipping ready to run systems.

The quality of their products was second to none, with each board literally torture-tested with a two year warranty at no extra charge, unlike Godbout, which charged a premium for its certified line of boards.

Eventually, they moved to Carson City, Nevada because of its available inexpensive land, its superior tax position (no income or inventory tax) and because the sales VP liked to ski at Tahoe. It is an interest company in that it has both zero debt and a AAA rating with D&B.

When they moved to Nevada, they changed the name of the company from Industrial Micro Systems to IMS International, since they had started a European business, also.

In the mid-80s, in an aborted attempt to go public, they changed the name to L/F Technologies because the SEC balked that there were too many companies with the name IMS in them that were public. At around the same time, they purchased Intercontinental Micro Systems of California (ICM,) due to their partially similar product line.

In the early 90s, they came out with a product line called the Cubix, a highly compact Unix based system (not S-100) and eventually changed the name of the company to Cubix, as it was a little easier on the tongue than L/F Technology. They are still in business today, and very few folks realize, that, in the early 1980s, they originated the whole concept of blade and network based computing, back then calling it master/slave, with an outsourced OS called TurboDOS.

Hope this helps, and if you need anymore information on them, just drop a line. i actually have two systems still operation from them, although i haven't started either up in about 5 years.

Sincerely, Ken Koswener