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Ryal R. Poppa was hired in February 1985 by Storage Technology to bring the company out of bankruptcy. He immediately canceled some product-development work, but to the surprise of creditors, Poppa continued a project for an automated mass storage device, the 4400 Automated Cartridge System (ACS). The product was unveiled in January 1987. The ACS is described as 'nearline' storage; that is, the product is neither on-line nor off-line, but is something in between. The 4400 is 7.7 feet high by 11 feet in diameter, and it holds as many as 6,000 3480-tape cartridges. The system can locate and load a cartridge or a tape spool in 11 seconds, which is an order of magnitude faster than manual systems. The ACS product will ship in the first quarter of 1988. Storage Technology hopes that the ACS will help re-establish the company as a storage industry leader.

Tape backup systems aren't all that popular with PC owners today, but recent price wars among tape-drive manufacturers could help change that. Market analysts estimate the "attach rate" of tape […]

IBM was the driving force behind the one-half inch, reel-to-reel drive with a nine-track format that has become an industry standard. This drive no longer meets industry needs. IBM has introduced the Model 3480 one-half inch cartridge drive. It has an eighteen-channel head to read and write eighteen channels simultaneously. It is priced at $150,000. The HI-TC group has endorsed IBM's cartridge but has adopted a two-channel head for two-track serpentine recording. The group has adopted ESDI (Enhanced System Device Interface) as a standard basic hardware interface.

3M has a one-fourth inch cartridge that uses an elastic belt driving two coplanar hubs from one capstan. The belt provides tape transport and tensioning functions. 3M's new cartridge, the DC-600XTD, and drive will be for high capacity applications. Cartrex's new cartridge uses the N2 principle to reduce ISV problems. It uses two belt which improve tape alignment and guidance.

The cartridge tape drive industry offers one-half and one-fourth inch tape drives. The QIC group for one-fourth inch tape drives meets regularly to promote standard formats and interfaces. The QIC-24 standard defines the recording format for DC-300 XL-DC-600 A cartridges. The QIC-36 interface consists mostly of signals to control parameters. The QIC-44 includes some intelligence. The QIC-02 standard specifies the interface between a host and the QIC-36 drive interface. The QIC-50 standard extends bit and track densities. The QIC group is also concerned with products for the PC market and products matching the form factors of the sub-4 inch Winchester. Some manufacturers are working with ANSI in an attempt to set standards for one-half inch cartridges.

Read-write heads for cartridge tape drives determine the success of a drive's design. The heads make up about twelve to fifteen percent of the tape drive's cost. Heads must accomplish read-write operations while exposed to contaminants and poor handling. Heads must assure data integrity and resist wear. Wear problems need attention at the head-design stage. One-half inch open-reel drives and some cartridge products have complete tape-path control. One-fourth inch cartridge drives depend entirely on integral media for tape guidance and tension control. Track registration problems originate from tape wander, head positioning errors and head mounting tolerances.