San Jose-based Microscience International Corp has now converted its letter of intent to acquire worldwide manufacturing and marketing rights to the Siemens AG Megafile Winchester disk drives in capacities of 700Mb up into a firm agreement. Siemens announced that it was abandoning the OEM disk drive business in May, and the letter was signed in June (CI No 1,444). The drives in question are the 777Mb, 1.2Gb and 1.6Gb 5.25 models and Microscience expects to begin ships in the fourth quarter. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but Microscience will get manufacturing and marketing rights to sub-14mS SCSI and ESDI drives, assembly tools and test equipment, and Siemens will provide engineering personnel to assist in the transfer of technology. Microscience will make the drives at its Taiwan plant; it currently does 3.5 and 5.25 half-height disks storing 40Mb to 120Mb.
