History (1996): New Standardized 3.5-Inch HDD Cartridge From Nomaï and SyQuest

Nomaï (Avranches, France) and SyQuest Technology (Fremont, CA) announced at CeBIT that they will propose a new standard for 3.5-inch removable storage media, the Power Disk Cartridge (PDC), based on SyQuest technology, to ECMA, the European standardization organization.

Up to now, the California firm has been very particular with this technology, never leaving it to others to produce the HDDs that make up the largest share of its profits.

“The product is set to replace the 1.44MB floppy disk which is the last remaining relic from the stone age of computing,” commented SyQuest founder and president Syed Iftikar, whose new EVP sales and marketing, Chet Brown, will chair the PDC standards committee.

The 2 companies have finally managed to join forces, after numerous disputes, in order to compete with Iomega on the one hand, which has no intention of adopting the new standard, and 3M/MKE with their new high capacity floppy disk on the other hand.

The PDC provides a forward and backward compatibility path for users of 135, 270 and 540MB single disks and beyond.

Bernhard Schuh, GM, Europe for Syquest, specified that companies wishing to adopt the standard in the future will not have to pay any royalties. At the same time the new partners specified, “the PDC standard committee will regulate qualification of new applicants to market the standard.”

The PDC has furthermore received initial support from Kao Infosystems, Maxell, Polaroid and Xyratex.

Marc Frouin, Nomaï’s CEO, expects ECMA approval of the mechanical parts by December 1996, of the low level format by March 1997, and of the high level format by June 1997.

A proposal for the international organization ISO is scheduled for submission in March 1997.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue 99, published on April 1996.