History (1990): Two New Taiwanese HDD Manufacturers

The first product from Zentek Storage Inc. of Taiwan will be a one-inch high 3.5-inch drive for laptops, which will be sold both on domestic and international markets. Zentek was formed as a joint venture by two firms: Longshine Electronic Co. Ltd. and Universal Scientific Industrial Corp. Ltd. Drive technology was obtained from the EOPC. Mass production is schedules to begin at Zentek’s factory in Huko, 10km North of Hsinchu, before the end of the year. The firm originally hoped to put the drives into mass production by October, but has postponed the schedule because of some problems with the mechanism that threatens product reliability.

Greenery Technology Co. Ltd. of Taiwan has begun production of HDDs at its plant in the Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park, with first shipments to go out to customers by the end of August. A prototype drive, developed by ITRI, the government electronics research institute, was transferred to the firm earlier this year. The maximum monthly production capacity of the firm’s plant will be 20,000 units. Initial production will be will be 2,000 to 3,000 units per month. The first series of drives from Greenery, the GT-360 series, features a formatted capacity of 57MB. A 40MB version is available to OEM customers ordering quantities over 100 pieces, for the reference price of about $230 to $240 FOB. The firm is currently developing a 100MB version, which was supposed to be announced in October. Sub-inch high 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch drives for notebook and laptop computers are also under development, and are scheduled for second quarter release in 1991.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue ≠34, published on November 1990.