History (1995): ComByte Combines Minicartridge and Floppy Disk in Same Unit

ComByte (Fort Collins, CO) was created by former members of Colorado Memory Systems (see box below) to launch a product previously unseen.

It’s called the Doubleplay and it is a subsystem combining a minicartridge and a floppy disk drive in a 3.5-inch half-height package and therefore doesn’t require an extra bay to be installed in a computer.

Volume shipments are just beginning.

“Customers can expect to see the drive on dealer shelves for around $229,” said the company.

To achieve this price, the Doubleplay disk/tape drive combination uses one drive motor, one head positioning motor and one a new cartridge latch system using a balanced spring design to keep the data cartridge in close contact with the drive motor to eliminate jitter. Thus, the motor is stationary and doesn’t float as in other tape drives that rely on a spring loaded motor assembly.

Doubleplay is installed as a floppy drive with a single cable connection.

It copies and moves files from hard disk to tape or floppy media using Windows File Manager.

ComByte said that file access on tape is 30% faster than with single function devices.

The drive will be sold in configurations including multiple unit bulk packs for OEMs and common set of electronics for both devices.

Furthermore, the unit can read and write 720KB and 1.44MB 3.5-inch diskettes at twice the speed of current floppy drives, signifying a transfer equivalent to six floppy disks in one minute. The tape unit exploits QIC80 media in DC2120 (125MB without DC), DC2120 XL (170MB) and Sony QIC Wide (210MB) formats. MTBF is 40,000 hours.

ComByte has patented its technology. For retail sales, covered by a 3-year warranty, system integrators will have a single box with software, a tape and the user’s manual.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue 86, published on March 1995.

ComByte ceased operations in May 1, 1996.