History (1992): Future Domain to Acquire Western Digital SCSI Products

Future Domain Corporation (Irvine, CA) and Western Digital (Irvine, CA) have reached an agreement in principle for Future Domain to acquire rights to 2 of Western Digital’s SCSI board products, the WD7000 FASST and the WD7000SX, and exclusive rights to the WD7000EX.

Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed and the agreement was expected to close by February 21.

For Future Domain, this transaction is part of a strategy to further enhance its SCSI product offerings with high-end, “Bus Master” products to complement its lower cost, Programmed 1/0 products.

Several months ago, Western Digital notified its customers that it was ceasing production of these SCSI board products and seeking a qualified party to manufacture and service the products. Western Digital will, however, continue to prosecute its SCSI chip business.

Basic terms of the acquisition call for Future Domain to purchase manufacturing and marketing rights to all Western Digital SCSI board products.

These products include:
– WD7000EX – EISA to SCSI 32-bit intelligent (Bus Master) host adapter. 10MB/s SCSI synchronous data transfers supporting SCSl-2 command set. 32-bit first party DMA transfers across the EISA bus at a burst rate of 33MB/s.
– WD7000 FASST2 – AT to SCSI 16-bit intelligent (Bus Master) host adapter with floppy controller.
– WD7000SX – AT to SCSI non intelligent host adapter. Automatic 8-bit or 16-bit transfers defined by software.

Future Domain has agreed to manufacture and support the above products on an ongoing basis. Furthering this aim, it intends to utilize the facility located in Cork, Ireland, at which Western Digital’s products were previously built.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue ≠50, published on March 1992.