Winchester disk

Often referred to as Winchester disks.

Magnetic disks (also known as hard disks or winchester disks) use direct or random access file organization and so are faster than tape.

When the company set up its personal computer production last year, work was hampered by the inability to buy Winchester disk drives because of Western curbs on technology transfer.

The 39-year-old portfolio manager, who joined Alliance about a year ago, continues to favor Seagate Technology and Maxtor, which make Winchester disk drives for microcomputers.

It used two single-sided, double density 180K floppy disk (hard sectored) drives and an optional 5MB Winchester disk.

Digital Equipment Corporation produced a Winchester disk controller for the Rainbow capable of controlling hard disks compatible with the ST-506 interface.

The 7th West Coast Computer Faire saw the introduction of the 5 MB Winchester disk drive for IBM PCs by Davong Systems.

But to underscore its determination to hold onto its dominance, I.B.M. next month plans to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the Winchester disk drive, which the company invented in San Jose.

Mr. Kuehler joined I.B.M. as an associate engineer at the San Jose, Calif., research laboratory in 1958 and worked on the development of the first Winchester disk drives, now an industry standard.

NEW PRODUCTS Downsizing the Disk Drive No Winchester disk drive company has risen more rapidly than Conner Peripherals.

But as you show people a six-hour battery, 2.5 million instructions per second of performance and a 40-megabyte fast Winchester disk, they look at you and say, "That's all I really need for both my office and portable needs."

It has become increasingly clear that I.B.M. will no longer be the technological bulwark against foreign economic competition, a role it often played in the past with such inventions as the Winchester disk drive for data storage, a seminal achievement in 1973.

Ronald S. Sloan, a portfolio manager at Siebel Capital Management Inc., a money management firm also based in Larkspur, favors Seagate Technology, the nation's leading manufaturer of Winchester disk drives, storage devices used in computers.

It could be expanded, either by adding another pair of 5.25 inch floppy disk drives, and it could also support either an additional pair of RX01 or RX02 8-inch floppy disk drives or a winchester disk.

The deal, which was agreed to in December, involves Tandon's Winchester disk drive engineering and manufacturing facilities in Santa Clara and San Jose, Calif., and Singapore, as well as plated media operations in Santa Clara.

Over the following decade, sealed hard disks (often called Winchester disks) took their place as the primary data storage medium, initially in mainframes, then in minicomputers, and finally in personal computers starting with the IBM PC/XT in 1983.

The Laboratory computers are connected to a 100 MHz network which includes facilities for data archiving (CD ROM writers (2of), laser disks, exabyte tapes, winchester disks) and hard-copy devices to make slides, videos and black and white prints.

TAKING DRIVES TO THE LIMIT At I.B.M.'s Almaden Research Center, researchers have multiplied the capacity of Winchester disks twentyfold to squeeze a billion bits of information - a gigabit - onto a square inch.