While managing the restaurant, Alan Yong conversed with many of his customers who happened to be workers and businesspeople in the city, who were becoming increasingly acquainted with computer systems in their respective industries.

Golden Time of Taiwan was the initial manufacturer of the laptop's case and keyboard, while LMCLTI Inc. of Lionville, Pennsylvania, built the printed circuit boards and populated them with the needed electronic components.

[11] Following the acquisition of Zenith Data Systems by Groupe Bull of France in the early 1990s, Dauphin became the largest independent manufacturer of laptop computers based in Chicago.

[12] In February 1993,[13] Dauphin unveiled the DTR-1 (an abbreviation of Desktop Replacement-1), a touchscreen palmtop PC weighing 2.5 pounds (1.1 kg), measuring 9 by 5 by 1.5 inches (22.9 by 12.7 by 3.8 cm),[14]: 39  and running Cyrix's Cx486SLC microprocessor and Microsoft's Windows for Pen Computing operating system.

[20] After having lost their contract with the Department of Defense and saddled with debt to IBM, in August 1994 the company laid off about 14 of its 55 employees,[20] and in early January 1995 Dauphin filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

As relations deteriorated, Yong threatened to sell his shares of the company, putting Dauphin's planned second initial public offering at risk of being dashed by the SEC.

By October 1995, Yong made a truce with the investors to withhold selling shares in the company for two years, in exchange for receiving $140,000 for a portion of his 15-percent stake.

[27][28] In February 1997, Dauphin announced their acquisition of R. M. Schutz (RMS), an original design manufacturer of consumer electronics founded in 1981 and based in McHenry, Illinois, for an undisclosed amount.

[31][32] By 1998, the company relocated to Palatine, Illinois,[33] and introduced the Orasis (Greek for vision), a palmtop PC based on Intel's Pentium processor clocked at 233 MHz.

[34][35]: 3.4  In March 1999, BulFon SA, a European telecommunications company, agreed to purchase up to $7 million worth of units of the Orasis for distribution rights in North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and several countries of the former Soviet Union.