Conner Peripherals Inc got a bit of a shock when 20% shareholder Compaq Computer Corp decided to go to Quantum Corp for 3.5 Winchesters for its new line of low-priced computers on grounds of cost, and the company realises that in this age of cut-throat competition in the personal computer market, it needs more strings to its bow, and new businesses that add more value. Accordingly, the company proposes to diversify into storage subsystems integration and tape drive manufacture as well as disk manufacture. It has formed Conner Technology Inc as a wholly-owned subsidiary to develop, manufacture and market proprietary high capacity tape drive products; and Value-Added Storage Solutions Group with two divisions, one to market Conner disk drives and the other to market new storage subsystesm through low-cost direct marketers, mass merchandisers and distributors. The company also announced its SofStor Series, a 3.5 disk drive with 85Mb or 170Mb capacity with pre-loaded MS-DOS version 5.0, Windows 3.1 and Microsoft Works for Windows and Central Point Software Inc Anti-Virus for Windows 1.0 – an approach already taken by Seagate Technology Inc a few weeks back. SofStor will initially go via Merisel Inc and Tech Data Corp in the US, early next quarter, at $600 for the 85Mb, $700 for the 170Mb. On the tape drive front, Conner has bought a licence to a new tape recording technology from St Paul-based Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Co, from which it hopes to develop a unique high performance 3.5 multi-gigabyte quarter inch tape drive. Conner is already working on Flash Memory plug-in cards with Intel Corp.And, back where it’s coming from, Conner announced that it has an OEM order from Sun Microsystems Inc for 210Mb 12mS seek time Cougar drives.
