History (1990): Will Ecol.2 and Integral Peripherals Follow Conner Peripherals Success Story?

The number of HDD manufacturers is declining.

Seagate acquired Imprimis, Maxtor bought back MiniScribe, Microscience purchased Siemens activity, and Priam was parceled.

New actors like PrairieTek or Areal Technology, are rather rare and they aren’t sure to succeed yet, especially since some of their best executives have left them to establish new companies. Former Areal people started Ecol.2 to produce low power high capacity 3.5-inch HDDs on glass disks. Some of PrairieTek’s businessmen set up Integral to launch a new gen of drives in a new form factor, 1.8-inch, with the help of Taiwanese Investment.

Integral in 2.5-inch and smaller drives
On November 1, 1990, former PrairieTek executives Steven B. Volk and Dr. James H. Morehouse announced they had formed a new company, Integral Peripherals Inc. (Boulder, CO).

“The company will design, manufacture and market subminiature disk drives for the palmtop and pocket computer, and data collection markets.”

Company founder, president and CEO Volk cofounded Tallgrass Technologies and PrairieTek. Morehouse started Amcodyne, manufacturer of removable 8-inch disk drives before co-founding PrairieTek. Also joining Integral are PrairieTek’s engineers John Blagaila, Dave Furay and Mike Utenick, and former executives from Maxtor/Miniscribe, Jim Dunckley and Jim Hopper.

Integral is working on new 1.8-inch form factor HDDs with storage capacities of 10 to 80MB.

Occupying 16,000 square feet of space in Boulder, the company will conduct there R&D, sales and marketing, and a pilot production manufacturing facility capable of producing a few thousand drives per month. High volume will be transferred in the Pacific Rim. From US and Asian sources, it seems like a Taiwan-based company, China Venture Management (CVM) Inc., will invest several million dollars in Integral to manufacture the 1.8-inch drives in Taiwan. CVM will own 25% of the US firm. The first product could be a 10MB unit followed by a 20MB drive, all utilizing only about 0.3 to 0.W power. The 10MB drive could be priced below $100.

Ecol.2 for glass disk 3.5-inch drives
Ecol.2 (short for Ecology 2000) was privately founded in June 1990 and incorporated in August 1990. This company was set up in Point Arena (CA), 150 miles north of San Francisco, CA, by 2 former executives of Areal Technology: Jack Schwartz, president and CEO, and Charles Woodward, VP marketing.

The main reason they left Areal is that the company had decided to focus on 2.5-inch HDDs based on glass disks when they believed there was a potential market in 3.5-inch ones for laptop computers.

Schwartz has 30 years experience in the disk drive industry, spending 18 years with IBM (senior engineer) and one year with Shugart Associates (director of engineering). He was founder of RMS, Maxtor and Areal.

Woodward has been GM of Areal.

Their products, with first evaluation units available in 3Q91, will be a series of 3.5-inch HDDs named Glasstor with one single glass disk. The first series includes one-inch high drives and formatted capacities of 50 or 100MB, the second one will be 0.67-inch high with 100 or 200MB.

“We expect to be able to double areal density in a year’s time for Comdex/Fall 91 announcement.“

Their power consumption will be less than 1W and they will offer IDE then SCSI interfaces.

Ecol.2 has available 18,000 square feet of facilities and actually uses approximately 8,000 square feet.

“Designed and manufactured with ecology in mind, the drives do not use nickel plated disks, thus eliminating a potentially environmentally harmful element in the manufacture of these drives. Recycled material will be used whenever possible and all efforts are underway to reduce ecological impact during all aspects of the corporate endeavor. Energy consumption, in both operations of the drive and the manufacturing process, has been reduced to the lowest possible level,” guarantees the company.

“Pricing for the drives will compare very favorably with existing technology and currently available 50 to 200MB drives. They will be available for shipment to initial OEM accounts by the end of the year,” according to company officials.

The original product was developed as a 100MB 3 .5-inch single disk drive. They all will use glass media, voice-coil actuators, thin-film heads and thermoplastic HDAs. The mechanical package utilizes actuator and spindle drive motors of Ecol.2’s design.

The glass media has been developed in cooperation with the Japanese firms Hoya Company and Nippon Sheet Glass (a shareholder of Areal Technology).

Ecol.2 began developing a marketing and technical support network. US sales and technical support will be in Point Arena, CA, sales and administration in San Jose, CA. Distributors are Disclean Service in Paris, France, and Data Maintenance in Battwill, Switzerland. Others will soon be announced in London, UK, Tokyo, Japan, and Taipei, Taiwan. Off-shore manufacturing is projected in Europe and Far East.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue ≠35, published on December 1990.

Note: Integral Peripherals bankrupts in 1998 and Eco.2 went out of business in 1993.