Simi Valley, California-based Wangtek Inc has expanded its line of 4mm digital audio tape drives with the Model 7200, a 3.5 form factor drive that provides 2Gb of data storage on a single cassette without data compression: using a two-to-one data compression ratio, drive capacity increases to 4Gb, with a four-to-one data compression ratio, the capacity rises to 8Gb, and the transfer rates with data compression are 366Kb and 732Kb per second respectively; the 7200 is based on the same electronics package as in Wangtek’s 6000 Series of 5.25 drives, but the company says that new device can be customised by Flash EEPROM technology; updates can be sent to the drive from the system via a SCSI bus or can be directly loaded into the drive from a digital audio tape cassette, and to achieve accurate data recording, the servo tension sensing arm design monitors and adjusts tape tension; the 7200 is $1,200 in OEM volumes and the company’s Autoloader with fully integrated digital audio tape drive is $2,700.
