The company primarily manufactured tape drive systems, especially those using quarter-inch cartridges (QIC)s, for personal computers and workstations.

[1][2] Whereas Colorado Time Systems focused on computerized timekeeping displays for athletics while also selling a broad range of other products, Beierwaltes founded Colorado Memory Systems chiefly to focus on data storage products for the burgeoning personal computer industry of the 1980s.

[2] Before founding Colorado Time Systems in 1972, Beierwaltes was a product manager for Hewlett-Packard from 1964 to 1974, working on the development and marketing for HP's electronic measuring equipment, especially their line of voltmeters.

[1] In 1989, they released a system in the Jumbo line, the QIC-150, that was the first to make use of Stac Electronics' Stacker compression algorithm in hardware.

[8][9] This allowed for a doubling of storage compared to contemporaneous QIC disk drives capacity without incurring a high performance penalty.

Their headquarters spanned 88,000 square feet and employed between 250 and 500 workers, each in disparate divisions, including management, manufacturing, and software development.