Control Data Corp’s Imprimis Technology Inc – on its way to Seagate Technology Inc, has regained leadership in the OEM disk drive world for the first time for several years with the first 5.25 drive to crack the 1Gb barrier. The new Elite drive offers 1.2Gb storage – 1.5Gb with Zone Bit Recording – and achieves the capacity by cramming 10 platters into the package and spinning them at 5,400rpm instead of the usual 3,600rpm to cut latency to 5.5mS from 8.3mS. Average seek time is 12mS and transfer rate is 3Mbytes-per-second at 24MHz. Interfaces are SMD, IPI-2 and SCSI-2. The things are $4,000 in OEM quantities with samples in the fourth quarter, volume sometime in the first half of 1990. The company is ready with a 2.5 8 drive for October launch and the Elite announcement puts pressure on the previous capacity and performance leaders, Maxtor Corp and Siemens AG to follow suit. Seagate definitive next week: see page 5.
