History (1988): IBM 3.5-Inch FD and HDD Standard for PS/2 Models

IBM announced a new 3.5-inch FD and HDD standard for PS/2 models.

These products are manufacture d by IBM and Seagate, one of its known OEM’s.

Micropolis is not yet in this market, but is obviously working on 3.25-inch format, important for its future.

“This market is not static, and 3.25-inch drives will certainly move into 100 to 200MB range for applications that are not performance sensitive,” said Chet Baffa, SVP of sales and marketing, Micropolis. “But for those who will require average access speed well below 20 milliseconds, small form factor, low power and capacities that begin, not end, at 182MB, this half-height drive (165011670) is ideal.”

To remain a leading supplier of Winchester drives, Micropolis must introduce 3.25-inch products before many vendors begin adopting the smaller form factor. There has been a major shakeout of small disk drive companies in the past 3 years.

They now number a dozen and Micropolis seems to be one of the most reliable suppliers.

The company has its own regional offices for USA distributions, at Mountain View, CA, King of Prussia, PA, Salem, NH, Irvine, CA, Atlamonte Springs, FA and Bedford, TX). In Europe it has HQs in Reading, UK.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue ≠1, volume ≠1, published on February 1988.