History (1988): Micropolis Into 3.5-Inch HDDs

Micropolis Corporation (Chatsworth, CA) introduced the 1700 Series, a line of 3.5-inch Winchester drives designed to provide up to 200MB of formatted storage.

“The 1700 Series meets the specific system-design needs of the newer, more powerful workstations and microcomputers that increasingly require form factor smaller than a half-high 5.25-inch drive,” said Chet Baffa, SVP. “This is an emerging market that will reach ‘critical mass’ beginning in mid-1989.”

The 1700 Series includes 3.5-inch HDDs with formatted storage capacities ranging from 112 to 202MB, and average access time of 15ms.

The drives feature integrated disk controllers and are available with a choice of interface – the model 1740 with the AT bus, and the model 1770 with SCSI.

The drives are designed to operate a minimum of 50,000 hours, an MTBF equivalent to about six years if the drives were in continuous operation 24 hours/day, 7 days/week.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue ≠11, volume ≠1, published on December 1988.