JTS Corp, the company formed by Jugi Tandon to design a very low profile 3 cartridge disk drive with capacities starting at 800Mb, is to go public by reversing into its Sunnyvale, California neighbour Atari Corp. Under the deal Atari shareholders will end up with about 60% of the enlarged company with JTS management will running the combined show. The one thing Atari still has is a significant cash balance, so it is extending a $25m bridge loan to JTS, and in the event that the merger is not completed, the loan will be convertible into JTS Series A preferred shares at the option of Atari or JTS. The new company will take the JTS Corp name with the Atari Jaguar games machine business and the JTS disk business operating as separate divisions. JTS’s disk drives are to be made by IBM UK Ltd spin- out Xyratex Ltd in Havant, UK (CI Nos 2,568, 2,658). Tandon is best known for his Tandon Corp, originally a floppy disk drive maker that moved into personal computers in pique after IBM Corp terminated a big OEM contract. The most original creation at Tandon was the Data Pac exchangeable cartridge drive. The new JTS says it will create a modern successor.
