History (1989): Masstor Recuperates IBM’s 3850 Tape Technology

Masstor Systems (Santa Clara, CA) has signed an agreement with IBM Corp. to take back manufacturing of IBM’s 3850 cartridges.

Big Blue developed the 3850 backup system in 1974, based on a 50MB helical scan recording tape in a cartridge but with no big success and quit production in 1986.

On its side, Masstor continued in the field of high-capacity helical scan tape technology with a new 31.5GB cartridge and libraries.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue ≠15, published on April 1989.