An intense heavy ion linear accelerator system is being constructed for basic researches on HIF and heavy ion pumped laser at TIT. This accelerator system consists of an RFQ‐Linac, an ECR ion source, a fine‐focusing beam transport system and a fast beam pulsing system. By using this system, ion beams of16O+with currents of 7 mA and an energy of 3.5 MeV will be focused onto a small spot area of about 1 mm2. At present, the maximum beam current obtained from the TIT‐RFQ is 1.6 mA for4He+. The overall status of this linac system and preliminary experiments with beams of4He+are discussed. ©1996 American Institute of Physics.