Shugart Associates

Last updated
Shugart Associates
Company typeDefunct
Industry Computer hardware
Founded1973
Founder Alan Shugart
FateAcquired by Xerox in 1977 and liquidated in 1985 and 1986 [1]
Headquarters
Sunnyvale, California
,
United States
Area served
Worldwide
Products

Shugart Associates (later Shugart Corporation) was a computer peripheral manufacturer that dominated the floppy disk drive market in the late 1970s and is famous for introducing the 5+1⁄4-inch "Minifloppy" floppy disk drive. In 1979 it was one of the first companies to introduce a hard disk drive form factor compatible with a floppy disk drive, the SA1000 form factor compatible with the 8-inch floppy drive form factor.

Contents

Founded in 1973, Shugart Associates was purchased in 1977 by Xerox, which then exited the business in 1985 and 1986, [1] selling the brand name and the 8-inch floppy product line (in March 1986) to Narlinger Group, [2] which ultimately ceased operations circa 1991.

History

Beginnings

After a distinguished career at IBM and a few years at Memorex, Alan Shugart decided to strike out on his own in 1973. After gathering venture capital, he started Shugart Associates. The original business plan was to build a small-business system (similar to the IBM 3740 [3] ) dealing with the development of various major components, including floppy disk drives and printers. After two years, Shugart had exhausted his startup money and had no product to show for it. The board then wanted to focus on the floppy disk drive, but Shugart wished to continue the original plan. Official company documents state that Shugart quit, but he himself claims that he was fired by the venture capitalists. Shugart went on with Finis Conner to found Shugart Technology in 1979, which was later renamed to Seagate Technology in response to a legal challenge by Xerox.

Shugart SA400 minifloppy 5+1/4-inch disk drive. Shugart SA400.jpg
Shugart SA400 minifloppy 5+1⁄4-inch disk drive.
Shugart SA1004 - 10MB 8 inch hard disk drive. Shugart SA1004 - 8 inch HDD.jpg
Shugart SA1004 – 10MB 8 inch hard disk drive.

The 5+1⁄4-inch floppy disk drive was introduced by Shugart in September 1976 as the Shugart SA-400 Minifloppy (Shugart's trademarked brand name) [4] at an OEM price of $390 for the drive and $45 for ten diskettes. [5] The SA-400 and related models became the company's best selling products, with shipments of up to 4000 drives per day.

The original SA-400 was single-sided with 35-tracks and used FM (single density) recording. It could be used on either hard- or soft-sector floppy controllers and was specified at 80.6 kB with a soft sectored controller. [6] The drive became the basis of the disk system on the Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I, Apple II, and many other early microcomputers.

Late 1970s

Xerox announced acquisition of Shugart Associates in August 1977 and completed its purchase that December at a price of about $41 million. [7]

The 440 kilobyte SA450, a double-sided double-density 5¼-inch full height floppy disk drive was announced in December 1977 at $450. [8]

In 1979, Shugart Associates introduced the "Shugart Associates System Interface" (SASI) to the computing world; the interface subsequently evolved into SCSI (Small Computer System Interface). The first standard process completed in 1986 with ANSI standard X3.131-1986 (popularly known as SCSI-1) as the result. Larry Boucher led the SASI engineering team; he and several of the engineers who worked on SASI left in 1981 to found host adapter maker Adaptec.

Also in 1979, Shugart Associates introduced the SA-1000, a series of hard disk drives that kept as many mechanical, electrical and formatting similarities as possible with its floppy-drive counterparts. Their physical dimensions, including mounting holes, were the same as an 8-inch floppy drive, making them some of the earliest hard drives compatible with a floppy drive form factor. [9] By 1983, Shugart Associates had shipped over 100,000 such drives.

1980s

In the early 1980s, in order to avoid development and start-up costs, the company turned to Matsushita Communications Inc., a subsidiary of Panasonic Corporation (then known as Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd), for its half-height 5+1⁄4-inch drives, sending that company on its way to becoming the largest floppy drive manufacturer in the world. In 1985, in order to resolve an inventory accumulation and as part of its exit strategy, Xerox gave up Shugart's exclusive rights to the Matsushita half-height 5+1⁄4-inch floppy drives. Shugart's eventual downfall came about partially as a result of the company failing to develop a reliable 80-track disk drive.

In 1983 the company changed its name to Shugart Corporation.

In late 1983, Shugart announced a "production-quantity optical drive", the Optimem 1000, offering 1 GB of storage on 12-inch disks using a laser-based recording technology, taking advantage of a substantially increased track density compared to contemporary magnetic recording technologies. The process of recording involved focusing the laser beam on the metal layer of the disk, this causing a "decomposable polymer" layer underneath to generate "gaseous components" and to push up on the metal layer, forming a bubble. This deformation would cause a change in the intensity of the reflected light from a laser reading the disk, thus providing a means of data storage. Initial OEM pricing for the drive was given as $6,000 per unit in 250-unit quantities [10] with disks priced about $266 each (UK price). [11] Disks with capacities of up to 3 GB were reportedly being developed. [11] Optimem was sold to Cipher Data in 1986 who then discontinued operations in 1991. [12]

Shugart's operating losses in 1984 along with Xerox's own troubles led Xerox to conclude in 1985 that Shugart businesses were no longer strategically important, resulting in a decision to close down Shugart rather than invest in recovery. [1] [7] Most of Shugart's businesses were shut down afterwards; however its floppy disk drive business was sold in March 1986 to Narlinger, which promptly rebranded itself as Shugart Corporation [2] [13]

Under the management of Narlinger, Shugart acquired several discontinued product lines such as Tandon's 8-inch floppy drives in 1986 [14] and in 1988 bought the Optotech 5984 Write Once Read Many (WORM) drive and its manufacturing facility for less than US$4-million. [15] In 1987, it acquired Kennedy Company, a maker of tape drives and hard disks, from Allegheny Ludlum. [16] Shugart shortly after sold Kennedy's assets to Irwin Magnetic Systems, who promptly folded the Kennedy division while retaining its patents. [17] Shugart themselves ceased operations around 1991.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Floppy disk</span> Removable disk storage medium

A floppy disk or floppy diskette is a type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined with a fabric that removes dust particles from the spinning disk. The three most popular floppy disks are the 8-inch, 5¼-inch, and 3½-inch floppy disks. Floppy disks store digital data which can be read and written when the disk is inserted into a floppy disk drive (FDD) connected to or inside a computer or other device.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Xerox 820</span> Desktop computer developed by Xerox

The Xerox 820 Information Processor is an 8-bit desktop computer sold by Xerox in the early 1980s. The computer runs under the CP/M operating system and uses floppy disk drives for mass storage. The microprocessor board is a licensed variant of the Big Board computer.

In computer science, group coded recording or group code recording (GCR) refers to several distinct but related encoding methods for representing data on magnetic media. The first, used in 6250 bpi magnetic tape since 1973, is an error-correcting code combined with a run-length limited (RLL) encoding scheme, belonging into the group of modulation codes. The others are similar encoding methods used in mainframe hard disks or microcomputer floppy disks until the late 1980s. GCR is a modified form of a NRZI code, but necessarily with a higher transition density.

Each generation of floppy disk drive (FDD) began with a variety of incompatible interfaces but soon evolved into one de facto standard interface for the generations of 8-inch FDDs, 5.25-inch FDDs and 3.5-inch FDDs. For example, before adopting 3.5-inch FDD standards for interface, media and form factor there were drives and media proposed by Hitachi, Tabor, Sony, Tandon, Shugart and Canon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Floptical</span> Type of floppy disk drive

Floptical refers to a type of floppy disk drive that combines magnetic and optical technologies to store data on media similar to standard 3+1⁄2-inch floppy disks. The name is a portmanteau of the words "floppy" and "optical". It refers specifically to one brand of drive and disk system, but is also used more generically to refer to any system using similar techniques.

IBM manufactured magnetic disk storage devices from 1956 to 2003, when it sold its hard disk drive business to Hitachi. Both the hard disk drive (HDD) and floppy disk drive (FDD) were invented by IBM and as such IBM's employees were responsible for many of the innovations in these products and their technologies. The basic mechanical arrangement of hard disk drives has not changed since the IBM 1301. Disk drive performance and characteristics are measured by the same standards now as they were in the 1950s. Few products in history have enjoyed such spectacular declines in cost and physical size along with equally dramatic improvements in capacity and performance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Compaq Portable series</span> Laptop manufacturer

Compaq's first computers' form factors were portable, also called "luggables", and then "lunchbox computers", and together constituted the Compaq Portable series. These computers measured approximately 16 inches (410 mm) deep, 8 inches (200 mm) tall, and approximately 20 inches (510 mm) wide. As the products evolved, laptops and notebooks were created offering a new level of portability that caused the market to explode.

Sirius Systems Technology was a personal computer manufacturer in Scotts Valley, California. It was founded in 1980 by Chuck Peddle and Chris Fish, formerly of MOS Technology and capitalized by Walter Kidde Inc. In late 1982 Sirius acquired Victor Business Systems from Kidde and changed its name to Victor Technologies. It made the Victor/Sirius series of personal computers. The company made a public stock offering in the first half of 1983, but went into Chapter 11 protection from bankruptcy before the end of 1984. The company's assets were acquired by Datatronic AB, a Swedish software/hardware distribution company headed by Mats Gabrielsson. Gabrielsson signed a distribution deal with Kyocera, which began to supply PC clones to Victor.

Micropolis Corporation was a disk drive company located in Chatsworth, California and founded in 1976. Micropolis initially manufactured high capacity hard-sectored 5.25-inch floppy drives and controllers, later manufacturing hard drives using SCSI and ESDI interfaces.

Floppy disk format and density refer to the logical and physical layout of data stored on a floppy disk. Since their introduction, there have been many popular and rare floppy disk types, densities, and formats used in computing, leading to much confusion over their differences. In the early 2000s, most floppy disk types and formats became obsolete, leaving the 3+1⁄2-inch disk, using an IBM PC compatible format of 1440 KB, as the only remaining popular format.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Floppy-disk controller</span> Circuitry that controls reading from and writing to a computers floppy disk drive

A floppy-disk controller (FDC) is a hardware component that directs and controls reading from and writing to a computer's floppy disk drive (FDD). It has evolved from a discrete set of components on one or more circuit boards to a special-purpose integrated circuit or a component thereof. An FDC is responsible for reading data presented from the host computer and converting it to the drive's on-disk format using one of a number of encoding schemes, like FM encoding or MFM encoding, and reading those formats and returning it to its original binary values.

Alan Field Shugart was an American engineer, entrepreneur and business executive whose career defined the modern computer disk drive industry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Disk II</span> Floppy disk drive for the Apple II computer

The Disk II Floppy Disk Subsystem, often rendered as Disk ][, is a 5 +1⁄4-inch floppy disk drive designed by Steve Wozniak at the recommendation of Mike Markkula, and manufactured by Apple Computer It went on sale in June 1978 at a retail price of US$495 for pre-order; it was later sold for $595 including the controller card and cable. The Disk II was designed specifically for use with the 1977 Apple II personal computer to replace the slower cassette tape storage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Osborne Executive</span> Portable computer released in 1983

The Osborne Executive, released in April 1983, was the successor to the Osborne 1 portable computer. Produced by the Osborne Computer Corporation, the Executive offered numerous improvements over the already successful Osborne 1, including a 7-inch amber phosphor CRT display and more space efficient half-height 5 ¼ disk drives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Apple FileWare</span> Floppy drive by Apple

FileWare floppy disk drives and diskettes were designed by Apple Computer as a higher-performance alternative to the Disk II and Disk III floppy systems used on the Apple II and Apple III personal computers. The drive is named Apple 871 in service documentation, based on its approximate formatted storage capacity in kilobytes, but is most commonly known by their codename Twiggy, after the famously thin 1960s fashion model named Twiggy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of the floppy disk</span>

A floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a thin and flexible magnetic storage medium encased in a rectangular plastic carrier. It is read and written using a floppy disk drive (FDD). Floppy disks were an almost universal data format from the 1970s into the 1990s, used for primary data storage as well as for backup and data transfers between computers.

The Tandon Corporation was an American disk drive and PC manufacturer founded in 1975 by Sirjang Lal Tandon, a former mechanical engineer. The company originally produced magnetic recording read/write heads for the then-burgeoning floppy-drive market. Due to the labor-intensive nature of the product, production was carried out in low-wage India where production costs were lower. This was the key to the company's competitiveness. In the late 1970s, Tandon developed direct equivalents to Shugart floppy drives, and is credited with the invention of DS/DD versions which became its primary product in the early 1980s.

PolyMorphic Systems was a manufacturer of microcomputer boards and systems based on the S-100 bus. Their products included the Poly-88 and the System 8813. The company was incorporated in California in 1976 as Interactive Products Corporation d/b/a PolyMorphic Systems. It was initially based in Goleta, then Santa Barbara, California.

Finis Conner is an American entrepreneur and pioneer of the disk drive industry, founding industry leaders Shugart Associates, Seagate Technology, and Conner Peripherals. Conner Peripherals, a major HDD manufacturer, was founded in 1987, and by 1990 had become the fastest-growing start-up in the history of U.S. commerce up until that point. Conner Peripherals was acquired by Seagate in 1996.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "USITC PUB-1860: In the matter of Certain Double-Sided Floppy Disk Drives and Components Thereof". US International Trade Commission. May 1986. p. 90-94.
  2. 1 2 "Mergers and Acquisitions". Computerworld . Vol. XX, no. 11. 17 March 1986. p. 126.
  3. ↑ "IBM 3740". IBM Archives. 23 January 2003. Archived from the original on 25 December 2017. Retrieved 20 August 2011.
  4. ↑ Sollman, G. (July 1978). "Evolution of the minifloppy (TM) product family" . IEEE Transactions on Magnetics. 14 (4). IEEE: 160-166. Bibcode:1978ITM....14..160S. doi:10.1109/TMAG.1978.1059748. S2CID   32505773. Archived from the original on 2021-08-23. Retrieved 2021-09-19.
  5. ↑ "Shugart Adds Minifloppy Drive". Computerworld . Vol. X, no. 37. 13 September 1976. p. 51. Archived from the original on 7 March 2017. Retrieved 29 October 2016.
  6. ↑ "SA400 minifloppy Diskette Storage Drive OEM Manual". Shugart Associates. 1977.
  7. 1 2 Barbash, Shepard (January 17, 1985). "Xerox to Close Its Shugart Disk-Drive Manufacturer". LA Times. Archived from the original on April 19, 2021. Retrieved December 19, 2017.
  8. ↑ "2-sided, double-density Minifloppy stores 440k bytes". EDN. December 15, 1977. p. 134.
  9. ↑ Yencharis, Len (September 13, 1979). "Winchester technology invades floppy territory with low-cost 8-in. drive". Electronic Design: 70, 71 & 75.
  10. ↑ Lloyd, Peter; Fujitani, Larry (October 1983). "New optical disk drive loads 1G byte on a 12-inch platter". Mini-Micro Systems. pp. 277–278, 281–282. Retrieved 25 February 2022.
  11. 1 2 Moody, Glyn (January 1984). "Mass storage sees the light" (PDF). Practical Computing. pp. 80–81. Archived (PDF) from the original on 30 September 2021. Retrieved 25 February 2022.
  12. ↑ Porter, James (July 1991). "Optimem". 1991 Disk/Trend Report - Optical Disk Drives. p. MFGR-10.
  13. ↑ Nee, Eric (March 10, 1986). "Xerox Sells Rest Of Shugart; Sets Drive Opns. Date". Electronic News : 17.
  14. ↑ "Tandon Division sold to Shugart" . Micro Marketworld . Vol. 9, no. 14. 7 July 1986. p. 17.
  15. ↑ "Shugart Buys WORM Line" . Electronic News . Vol. 34, no. 1711. 20 June 1988. p. 8.
  16. ↑ Tighe, John (September 1, 1987). "Shugart Agrees to Acquisition That Could Double Revenues". Los Angeles Times. Times-Mirror Company: 5 – via ProQuest.
  17. ↑ Deagon, Brian (August 13, 1990). "Archive warns rivals on patents". Electronic News. 36 (1822). Sage Publications: 12 et seq. – via Gale.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.