History (1998): First IBM 3590-Compatible Tape Drive From Fujitsu
Three years to did it
By Jean Jacques Maleval | January 7, 2022 at 2:00 pmIt took 3 years before any company, to our knowledge, announced an IBM Magstar 3590-compatible cartridge tape drive.
Fujitsu is in fact, the first, with the CeBIT announcement of its new Diana-4.
Fujitsu uses half-inch 3590 cartridges with 128 tracks in serpentine mode, native capacity 10GB. Transfer rate is 13.5MB/s, slightly higher than that of IBM’s own device (10MB/s). Fujitsu’s cartridge also has a better MTBF (50,000 hours), a lower price (DM45,000) and a longer warranty.
Another advantage of the Diana-4: it can avail itself of Fujitsu’s proprietary recording mode which can push the cartridge’s native capacity to 15GB, while maintaining a sustained transfer rate of 18MB/s.
The unit will be available in Europe beginning in September 1998, with Ultra SCSI or Fast Wide SCSl-2 interface, in a range of single- or multiple-cartridges, or in automatic loaders.
This article is an abstract of news published on issue 123 on April 1998 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.
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