[1] The idea behind Four-Phase Systems began when Boysel was designing MOS components at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1967.

Boysel wrote a manifesto explaining how a computer could be built from a small number of MOS chips.

[3] Boysel arranged for chips to be fabricated by Cartesian, a wafer-processing company founded by another engineer from Fairchild.

[9] The system also included a built-in video controller which could drive up to 32 terminals from a character buffer.

In response, Boysel assembled a system in which a single 8-bit AL1 was used as part of a courtroom demonstration computer system, together with ROM, RAM and an input-output device,[13][14] where the ROM and its associated latch acted like a microcode controller to provide control lines for memory read/write, selecting an ALU operation, and providing the address of the next microcode instruction.