At the end of last month, Cypress, California-based Nakamichi Peripherals Corp embarked on a programme to reorganise its quarter-inch mini-cartridge tape business. The hardware technology and manufacturing facility for quarter-inch mini-cartridge tape drives is to be spun out from Mountain Network Solutions Inc to form a separate company, Summit Memory Systems Inc. The spin-out will design, manufacture and market mini-cartridge tape back-up products for OEM, private-label and distribution customers worldwide, including Mountain itself. Summit is to offer its high-capacity, high-performance mini-cartridge tape back-up systems for the MS-DOS personal computer market under the Summit Express brand name, separate from the Mountain FileSafe product line. The Summit 3.5 half-height products, offered with capacities ranging between 120Mb and 300Mb, says the company, are ideal for backing up small form-factor hard disk drives and entry-level networks. A range of personal computer interfaces are supported, including floppy disk, Personal Computer AT, Micro Channel and industry-first Integrated Device Electronics.
