Lu had emigrated with his family from Taiwan to El Monte, California in 1963 and had worked for Computer Automation as a systems designer in the late 1970s.

[6] Lu considered ALR's chief rival in the 1980s to be AST Research, another Irvine-based computer company also founded by ex–Computer Automation employees.

Year-to-year sales from September 1988 totaled $40 million—one-tenth of AST's but up from $5 million in 1986—prompting Lu to negotiate to buy out the Wearnes Brothers' stake in the company.

[10] ALR later ditched Micro Channel for the directly competing Extended Industry Standard Architecture in October 1989,[11] releasing the PowerCache/4e later that year.

Four masked intruders brandished an assault rifle and a .45 caliber handgun at a security guard's head and demanded entry into the building.

[14] A crowded computer marketplace and ALR's lack of brand recognition put this IPO into question among investment bank analysts and industry journalists; Walter Winnitzki wrote that "anyone who wants to succeed will need both advanced products and a differentiated distribution approach".

[15] ALR was ranked the 25th and 26th largest personal computer manufacturer globally in 1991 and 1992, respectively, according to Electronics magazine—ahead of Unisys' presence in the market but behind Zeos International.

[19] Following strong growth in 1990 and 1991, the company posted its first quarterly loss in Q4 1992, following a fierce competition in the low-end computer market and the then-ongoing recession in the United States leading to relatively high unemployment in California.

[22] In March 1994, the company was awarded a patent for a microprocessor upgrade path that piggybacked off an existing processor while disabling it—a technology that ALR claimed was copied by Intel and several other PC manufacturers.