History (1998): OnStream Pleasant Surprise at Comdex

At Comdex, OnStream was a pleasant surprise.

Imagine that this manufacturer was only incorporated last February, and in that brief time, has managed already to assemble a team, 350 strong, even, fine tune its product, set up an impressive booth at Comdex and put together a solid press dossier. Not bad!

In order to understand the newcomer’s innovations, it helps to recall Philips’ DCC digital audio cassette, dating back to 1992, which was supposed to replace the analog audio cassette, according to the Dutch firm, competing at the time with Sony’s MiniDisc. Since then, the DCC was a categoric flop, and while the MiniDisc was slow in getting off the ground, Sony’s perseverance is beginning to pay off.

A streamer project based on Philips’ DCC mechanism showed up at Shuttle Technology’s booth during Comdex Fall’94, but was not heard from again.

In 1997, Philips, Verbatim and Exabyte collaborated on a project called Digamax, which bore a striking resemblance to DCC adapted for computer technology. At the time, there was also some question of developing an eventual digital video cassette to replace the traditional VHS analog cassette.

Now with OnStream, a new and improved DCC is making its comeback, but for computer backup, under the name Advanced Digital Recording (ADR) technology. The key is in the solid-state, magneto-resistive 8-channel head that can read and write 8 tracks simultaneously, and which is produced in its 6-inch wafer fab in Eindhoven. During the longitudinal recording, servo signals are written above and below each data track. A “spatially distributed” ECC enables a bit error rate of “lower than one unrecoverable bit in 10 bits written.” Depending on the computer data transfer rate, the 5.25-inch drive can adjust the tape speed from 0.5 to 1MB/s on the IDE drive (to 2MB/s on the SCSI device).

The 2-axis cartridge contains an 8mm wide tape with 192 tracks. Capacity is 15GB (roughly double that with software compression). There is also a possibility, for the SCSI version only, of using a cartridge that extends well beyond the drive, incorporating a longer magnetic tape reel (1,500 meters), and permitting 25GB of backup without DC. With a search speed of 60ips, it takes a good 16mn to scan the tape from start to finish.

Thus another new tape technology is born, one more targeting high-end PCs, workstations and small servers!

True, but this one has a particularly attractive price tag-look out, NS-20. The IDE version internal drive is only $299 retail, with the 15GB cartridge at $40. The latter is made by Verbatim. OnStream delivers Echo, a backup software by 1Vision Software, with all its devices.

OnStream, DCC spin-off

The privately-owned company is striding the Atlantic, with installations in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, where, incidentally, Philips has its HQs, and in Longmont, CO, in the same building as Adaptec and Chaparral Technologies. In fact, the firm is a Philips spin-off that acquired DCC technology in order to adapt it to computer storage. Not surprisingly, Philips holds significant equity in the new company. Other investors include GE Capital, Charterhouse Group International and Bill Beierwaltes, the firm’s COB and CEO. The latter figure was also a founder of Colorado Memory Systems and its CEO and chairman until that firm was sold to Hewlett-Packard in 1992. Beierwaltes also served as vice chairman of the QIC industry association. Arjan Warnaar, OnStream’s COO, served previously as GM of Philips Components LCD cells and modules. The new VP WW marketing, Andrew Grolnick, is also a veteran of Colorado Memory, who later became VP and GM for Zip’s OEM activities at !omega. Jackie Finch, director of marketing, also hails from Iomega. OnStream claims 350 employees worldwide, including a good hundred in Longmont.

The new venture holds 47 patents.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 131 on December 1998 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.

Note: OnStram went bankrupt twice, in 2001 being separated into 2 parts, OnStream Data and OnStream MST, and then in 2003, the MST division being reborn as fluXXion, a maker of high tech filtering products.