History (1989): Removable Winchester Disks at Comdex

The biggest surprise at Comdex/Fall’89 in removable Winchester disks came from Syquest with a 175MB disk.

Up until now, in this segment, the two main leaders, Syquest and Ricoh had reached 44 and 50MB respectively.

The announcement of the SQ5200 from Syquest was an event, a drive with a removable cartridge with a formatted capacity of 175MB on 2 disks with 4 heads, and a 19ms average access time, one-inch high.

Syquest, to come to this final result, has developed a new cartridge, with an improved dust-protection, it not only includes 2 disks but also 4 heads, the actuator and to turn the platters, a new patented motor based on an electronic magnetic field.

The SQ5200 will cost $690 for OEMs, with one cartridge, for a monthly order of 2,500 units.

The extra cartridge is pretty expensive: $160.

Syquest is also the first one to develop 3.5-inch Winchester cartridges. The Q3551 comes with SCSI or AT interfaces, weighing 150z and one-inch high. This time, the 42MB cartridge only includes the disk and will be less expensive, $35 a piece.

The 3.5-inch drive will be available for evaluation in December 1989 for $265 and for production in February 1990.

Let’s mention that the removable Winchester drive (no the same as the removable Winchester disk) is making more partisans, after IEF and Tandon.

A German company in Deggendorf, C-COM is offering 45 to 180MB in a Winchester mechanism originated from Fujitsu that plugs into a base of its own conception. It has even developed a removable WORM drive, the first one of this kind, based on an 800MB drive.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue ≠22, published on November 1989.