[1][2] Farris had previously co-founded Quadram Corporation, which was one of the first companies to manufacture expansion cards for the IBM PC, with Leland Strange in 1981.

[1] Shortly thereafter, he founded Boca Research, having closely watched the burgeoning personal computer industry intently and being exasperated at the cost of expansion cards at the time, which had not gone down significantly despite the PC architecture quickly commodifying.

Boca Research benefited from their location due to the large number of engineers and developers in the city and from the cross-pollination of talent coming from IBM.

Farris' philosophy was to wait until initial interest in new expansion technologies had waned so that they could bulk purchase parts necessary for their creation at a lower cost.

Despite healthy sales, reports of shrinking profit margins in the company in 1994—stemming from increased competition in the fax modem networking market where Boca had specialized in the preceding years—caused the stock to decline in June 1994.

[9] In September 1994, Farris stepped down as president and CEO, hiring Anthony Zalenski—then recently of Universal Data Systems, the modem manufacturing division of Motorola—to fill the role.

[13] Also in June 1995, Boca Research began talks with Hayes Microcomputer Products, a pioneering personal computer modem manufacturer, to acquire the latter for $75 million.

[14][15] Boca ended up acquiring Global Village Communication, a manufacture of networking products for Apple's Macintosh, in June 1998 for $10 million.

Under Zalenski, Boca attempt a turnaround by pivoting to software development, and, later, the manufacture of Web access set-top boxes for television sets.