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Technology Stocks : QUANTUM -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tech who wrote (4737)	11/10/1997 6:53:00 PM
From: Chuck Bleakney	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9124

< Chuck, I agree they do integrate Quantum drives into their computers and sell them. But Compaq does make from scratch, no help from Quantum at all, a 1 Terabyte, (1,000 GB) digital linear tape drive. They sell the drive by itself or in a dual stack library. It says "Compaq" on the drive and Quantum does not have a thing to do with it but that they licensed DLT technology to them. They are manufacturing systems with DLT drives integrated into them, AND DLT drives of their own. This is confirmed by Investor Relations at Comapq. Tech >> Ok Tech, lets analyse this carefully... If QNTM's major DLT offerings are in tens of GB(35/70) and Compaq's is in TB, (1000 GB = 1 TB) then it either does not use a "standard" DLT cartridge or it is a "loader" which simply has a magazine of standard DLT cartridges attached to it. A terabyte of data would require a large amount of tape, much more than would currently fit on a standard DLT cartridge. While they could probably manufacture a non-standard cartridge to hold this capacity, it would have to be pretty large. The energy required to spin those reels would be immense (By current tape standards). This would make it slow and cumbersome by comparison to a simple DLT magazine loader. (I know a little about this since I started working for DEC in Advanced Development in their Tape Engineering Department 20+ years ago.) Any magazine loader would surely have a Quantum DLT drive in it. So therefore I have to come to the conclusion that it is likely that the Terabyte DLT you are talking about is a value added product designed with a Quantum DLT drive in it. Chuck