The company was founded in 1979 by Raymond Brooke, Abraham Brand, James Willets and James Quackenbush all formerly of Pertec Computer Corporation, with initial seed money from Raymond Brooke and Abraham Brand and investors Irwin Rubin, Frederic Heim and Marshall Butler.

August 1984 they secured a major contract as sole producer of 20-megabyte hard drives for the base model of the IBM PC/AT.

[3] Part of the problem was high demand for the PC/AT; IBM increased its order from 90,000 units in 1984 to 240,000 in 1985, and manufacturing quality suffered.

[5] At the same time, Quantum Corporation sued CMI for patent infringement relating to the servo mechanism in the entire CM6600 line of drives.

In 1988 the shell corporation, still traded publicly, was acquired by Paul and Natalie Koether of Far Hills, New Jersey who used it as an investment vehicle; in 1992 it was renamed American Holdings, Inc.