In its early years, the company chiefly developed products for the Apple II, including sound synthesizers, samplers, and hard disk and tape drives.

Mountain Computer was founded in 1977 by a group of private investors based in Santa Cruz, California, with $5,000 in cash.

[5] Mountain Computer was originally based in the Harvey West industrial complex in Santa Cruz.

[7]: 8H  In 1982, the company partnered with Passport Designs to enhance the Music System with more complex composition software and a four-octave hardware keyboard.

The product was geared toward education—facilitating the teaching of phonics, spelling, and math, and acting as an instruction aid toward people with disabilities—and toward domestic use—as a makeshift security system and to facilitate the use of voice-controlled devices.

By that year, peripherals for the IBM PC and compatibles represented the vast majority of Mountain's product roster.