History 2000: 3 SuperDLT Drives Coming Soon

Quantum has been meting out information on its next gen of SuperDLT cartridge drives with an eyedropper, in order to sustain interest in the face of competition from LTO.

The latest report: the firm’s SuperDLT family will come in 3 phases. The first to arrive, theoretically in the autumn, should be a model with (native) specs of 110GB/11MB/s, to be followed by an 80/8 and then 110/16 model.

File access time will be 15s, once the cartridge has been inserted in the drive. All versions will be capable of reading DLT4000, 7000 and 8000 cartridges, thanks to the inclusion of a second magnetic head, in fact a miniaturized version of those found on DLT8000.

Quantum is nevertheless offering, to OEM library manufacturers, non-compatible versions without the additional head.

No price has yet been disclosed for any of the models.

The entire SuperDLT data control module is manufactured by Read-Rite. It includes head assembly with MR elements for reading and writing the tape, as well as a diode laser (to cover multiple optical tracks, located on the flip side of the tape, for servo control) tape guiding mechanisms, baseplate, and take up reel.

SuperDLT cartridges could include a flash memory chip, called MAC (Memory Access Chip), similar to Sony’s MIC on the AIT.

Drive diagnostics can be undertaken by processing information on the various elements by an infrared interface. The interface may also be used in the other direction in order to modify the firmware.

In the end, SuperDLT’s release is a bit behind schedule, but unless we hear otherwise in the immediate future, the same can be said of LTO.

IBM planned an announcement for April 4, still awaited, with availability by the end of June. At its CeBIT stand, last February, Big Blue displayed 3 robotics solutions for LTO: an autoloader from Adic (1 drive/7 cartridges) and 2 libraries, one with 1 or 2 drives and 18-22 cartridges, the other with 2 to 12 drives and up to 290 cartridges.

Hewlett-Packard will demonstrate for anyone interested its two models, one a low-end version, although nothing has yet been made official.

Seagate Technology is the sole manufacturer to provide complete specs (minus the price) for its drive, as well as a shipping date: end of June, to be confirmed.

Larger window for Exabyte
In any case, there’s at least one party that is overjoyed by all these delays: Exabyte, whose product acceptance window grows by the hour for Mammoth-2, already in production, and thus far with no competitor in its category, with a capacity of 60GB and transfer rate of 12MB/s.

As of the first quarter of this year, 3,100 units had been shipped, along with 500 libraries, virtually all through the reseller channel.

The success of M2, the quality of which is widely acknowledged, will nevertheless depend considerably on its ability not only to win back key OEMs, but also to make the drive read compatible with M1 cartridges, still not the case.

Exabyte is already preparing an M3 (120/20), with projected availability in June 2001, at a street price of $4,500, according to documentation provided us by CEO and COB Bill Marriner. The model will be designed jointly with Hitachi, which has an accord with Exabyte. The Japanese firm should also become a second source for M2 decks and scanners. Note that Hitachi, in 1997, wanted to enter 8mm-compatible drive technology with Exabyte cartridges, only to abandon the idea.

Meanwhile, Sony’s AIT-3 (100/12) is expected for December 2001. The Tandberg Data’s SLR100 (50/5) is already available with a SLR 60 (28.8/4) coming soon.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 148 on May 2000 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.