Thanks to all who responded to my request for information.
John, I didn't have access to the IEEE databases, but
I did find an article in Journal of Applied Physics
(vol. 75, pp. 6150-2, 1994) by a group from U. of Minn.
who studied variations in keeper layer thickness. They found an
increased signal, but also a relative decrease in signal/noise
with layer thickness. They by no means exhausted
the parameters at their disposal, and they only tested one type
of coating. There seemed to be a lot of room to engineer a better
design. I don't pretend to be expert at this, and so if anyone with
actual thin film/ magnetic storage experience wants to browse
this article and let me know how close it is to real life
commercial production, I'd appreciate it.
In this article the authors referenced U.S.Patent #4,985,795
by Beverly Gooch. I looked up the patent at patents.cnidr.org
and found that it is indeed assigned to Ampex. (You all knew
this already, didn't you?) This database had roughly 500
patents assigned to Ampex, in a fairly steady stream over
the past several years. A lot of the recent ones relate to
digital television, FWIW.
The authors also acknowledged the support of Maxtor Corp. and
Seagate Technology for the support of the work. Don't believe
for a minute that the major drive manufacturers are completely
ignorant of this technology. The CEO's, maybe.
I haven't been following this thread for long - is the current
rumor density normal for this stock/company? Just curious.
Thanks again,
William Isaacs |
