Before 2021, the company was named Intelligent Systems Corporation and once sold portable computers, video terminals, expansion cards, and other peripherals through a variety of manufacturing subsidiaries.

In 1973, the two decided to found Intelligent Systems as their break into the video terminal industry, which had seen soaring profits in the early 1970s as time-shared mainframe computers became more accessible to businesses who needed number-crunching power.

After three years of development, in February 1976 the company introduced the Intecolor 8001, a kit for a smart terminal powered by an Intel 8080 microprocessor and featuring 4 MB of RAM, driving the display capable of rendering 80 columns by 25 rows of text.

Released as the CompuColor II in 1978, this incarnation of the computer replaced the wear-prone 8-track tapes with floppy diskettes, shrunk the monitor down to a 13-inch-diagonal unit, and completely eliminated the terminal-centric features.

[4] In 1983, Intelligent Systems purchased Quadram Corporation, a start-up company that manufactured expansion cards for personal computers.

[6] In December 1985, the Quadram division bought a stake in Video Seven, a computer graphics technology based in Milpitas, California.

[12] Nearly a year later, Intelligent Systems agreed to sell the Quadram name and consumer-oriented PC expansions and peripherals to National Semiconductor.