Storage Technology Corp, Louisville, Colorado is putting its thin film disk drive head production unit into a joint venture, Rocky Mountain Magnetics Inc, with Digital Equipment Corp, retaining only a 19% interest, and marking its effective departure from the disk drive business – it buys in the drives used in its Iceberg and other disk arrays OEM. StorageTek employs about 250 people in thin film production at its headquarters in Louisville. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed. DEC will hold 81% in the new company, which will initially produce and sell inductive thin-film heads for OEM customers and for DEC’s OEM and end-user disk drives. Samples of magnetoresistive heads are planned to be available to customers in October.
