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From: burton@mitisft.Convergent.COM (Philip Burton)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Shugart 712 hard drive
Summary: Seagate IS NOT Shugart!!!
Keywords: Shugart 712 hard drive
Message-ID: <506@mitisft.Convergent.COM>
Date: 15 Nov 88 20:26:42 GMT
References: <496@jc3b21.UUCP> <12585@steinmetz.ge.com>
Organization: Convergent Technologies, San Jose, CA
Lines: 39

In article <12585@steinmetz.ge.com>, davidsen@steinmetz.ge.com (William E. Davidsen Jr) writes:
> In article <496@jc3b21.UUCP> rac@jc3b21.UUCP (Roger A. Cornelius) writes:
> 
> | heads, and sector size, or even have the phone number for Shugart (are they
> | still in business?) I'd appreciate it if you could email it to me.
> 
>   I believe that Shugart Associates (the original company) is defunct.
> Shugart Technologies (the new Shugart) is now called Seagate.
> -- 
> 	bill davidsen		(wedu@ge-crd.arpa)


Well, as an ex-Shugart employee, I've got to set the record straight.

Shugart Associates was perhaps the leading small-system disk drive company in
the late 70's and early 80's, but took a rapid dive by 1983.  Among its many
problems was high attrition to start-ups.  One such startup was called Shugart
Technologies, naturally enough, because one of its founders was Allen Shugart,
who was also a founder of Shugart Associates.

However, Shugart parent Xerox got Shugart Associates to change its name because
of trademark infringement.  (When Shugart Technologies first announced its product,
Shugart Associates got tons of phone calls.)

Seagate was the closest they could come up with.  And, Scotts Valley is close
to the sea.

When Xerox finally shut down Shugart Associates in early 1985, they sold off
all rights,  including the trademark, to a company in the LA area whose name
I can't recall now.

The way that the disk drive market moves, by now all of Shugart's products are
obsolescent in the market.  Except for the 1/2 high 5 1/4 drives, actually
made by Matsushita (Panasonic), there is no good reason to use a Shugart product.

In particular, I would not use a Shugart 712.  It was probably a 10 or 12 MB 
drive formatted, and never got widespread attention.  Much better to use an
equivalent Seagate drive, if cost is an issue.  I doubt that you could get
spare parts for the Shugart drive, let alone manuals.