[1] It combined MIDI sequencing and audio sampling (optional) with a set of 18 velocity and pressure sensitive performance pads, to produce an instrument optimized for use as a drum machine.

It featured programmable hi-hat decay, 18 digital drum sounds, a mixer section, 18 individual 1/4" outputs, an LCD display, 6 external trigger inputs and an internal floppy disk drive (optional).

[2] Despite possessing innovative and groundbreaking features[3] and influencing many future drum machine designs,[4] chronic software bugs[5][6] led to a reputation for unreliability, and ultimately contributed to the eventual demise of Linn Electronics.

[7][8] The Linn 9000 was used on many recordings throughout the 1980s, including international hits such as Stacey Q's "Two of Hearts", Divine's "You Think You're a Man", "Give It Up", "I'm So Beautiful", "Show Me Around" and "T Shirts and Tight Blue Jeans" and Rick Astley's "Together Forever".

[5][6] On early models, the power supply over-heated the CPU and had to be replaced under warranty, but insurmountable issues with the Linn 9000's operating system forced its eventual demise.

Linn attempted to debug, rewrite and enhance the operating system after firing the engineers who had written it, but he was limited by the 64K code space memory segmentation in the Intel 8088 microprocessor that left no room for new features.