It was initially priced at $1,495 and configured with dual 5.25" floppy drives, 256 KB of RAM, and a monochrome monitor.

It was manufactured by South Korean conglomerate Daewoo and distributed by Canton, Massachusetts-based Leading Edge.

The addition of the Intel 8087 floating point unit (FPU) coprocessor is supported in all Leading Edge Model D revisions with an onboard 40-pin DIP socket.

Unlike the IBM PC and IBM PC/XT, the Model D integrates video, the disk controller, a battery backed clock (real-time clock or RTC), serial, and parallel ports directly onto the motherboard rather than putting them on plug-in cards.

The unit comes with MS-DOS 2.11 or later,[1] and a special edition of GW-BASIC to support the extended graphics mode.

This disk contained a diagnostics program, and 'PARK.COM', a utility used to park the hard drive heads when the computer was to be moved.

Dataquest estimated that the Model D won 1% of the American home-computer market in 1986, its first year of availability.

[10] Along with the Tandy 1000 and Epson Equity series, the Model D was one of the first IBM PC compatible computers to become popular for home use, due to its low price and good reviews.

Syndicated newspaper columnists T. R. Reid and Michael Schrage, writing in April 1986, predicted that the popularity of the Model D would lead to hardware and software vendors specifically testing for compatibility.

[12] PC Magazine in October 1985 named the Model D the Editor's Choice, "clear winner" among six tested inexpensive computers.

InfoWorld earlier gave the bundled Leading Edge Word Processor a very good review, and now reported that the Model D was even compatible with IBM diagnostic software, unlike the Compaq Portable and others.

's lawyers", citing its superior-to-IBM keyboard, bundled word processor, and low price.

[14] A positive October 1986 review in Popular Mechanics also cited its low price and keyboard.