History (1988): Cipher 30001 Family

The Cipher 30001 series is a family of products that has been expected for a long time. It concerns tape drives for mid-range computers that use the half-inch 3480 cartridge with a capacity of 320MB higher than the IBM one (200MB).

At the end, Cipher Data Products,Inc. (San Diego, CA) plans to launch 26 different products that should replace the half-inch reel tapes that have been the main support in backing up for these last years.

All the 3000i series uses a new recording process named MSR (Multitrack Serpentine Recording), described in the following outlines, in two possible versions (MSR-2 and MSR-4).

The first three models announced are the 3532, 3832 and the 3834.

The 3532 is a low-range 5.25-inch form-factor unit with MSR-2 recording. The tape’s speed is 60ips and the average transfer rate reaches 242KB/s. A 300Mbyte HDD can be backed in approximately 20mn. This drive aims supermicros, low-end minis and workgroup computers. Like on all the 3000i series, a second data partition of 3.4MB is available for use by the host as a tape directory, permitting faster access time to records or files. The 3530 drive incorporates the industry standard SCSI interface. Drives can be mounted horizontally or vertically. A desktop model is available. And standard 9-track reel-to-reel commands ensure compatibility with existing system software. The user inserts the cartridge lika a VCR. The 3532 model will be sold at OEM price of $1,380, in large quantities.

Units 3832 and 3834 that will cost respectively $3710 and $4,400, sold in the same conditions, are mostly for workstations, mid-range and small mainframe computers. All 3832 and 3834 devices read and write data with the MSR-2 format to achieve a sustained data transfer rate of 448KB/s. Additionaly, the high-end 3834 uses the MSR-4 format to read and write at 896KB/s. An intelligent 512K bytes buffer optimize the datarate. Available interfaces include IPI-3, SCSI and Cipher/Pertec. An optional auto-loading stacker containing up to 10 cartridges provides a backup capability of 3,200MB.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue ≠7, volume ≠1, published on August 1988.