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Wilmington, North Carolina once had a thriving Black middle class and an elected interracial government. In 1898 white supremacists used violence to overthrow that government, kill Black residents and drive many others from the city.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
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| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Computer storage |
| Founded | 1990 in Boulder, Colorado, United States |
| Founders |
|
| Defunct | June 1998 |
| Fate | Acquired by H&Q Asia Pacific |
| Website | integralnet.com at the Wayback Machine (archived December 28, 1996) |
Intégral Peripherals, Inc., or simply Intégral, was an American computer hardware company based in Boulder, Colorado, and active from 1990 to 1998. It was the first company to manufacture hard disk drives with a platter diameter of 1.8 inches, smaller than the typical 2.5-inch hard drives used in laptops and other mobile devices. Initially met with market skepticism, Intégral found success in the mid-1990s with design wins in products by IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Toshiba, among others. However, its investors dropping out of the company amid the 1997 Asian financial crisis caused the company to file bankruptcy in 1998, after which it was acquired by private equity firm H&Q Asia Pacific.
Intégral Peripherals, Inc., was founded in 1990 in Boulder, Colorado, by Steve Volk, Jim Morehouse, and John Blagaila. The three co-founders had previously worked for Longmont-based PrairieTek, which was the first company to manufacture 2.5-inch hard drives. Hard drives with platter diameters matching PrairieTek's soon saw widespread use in laptops and other mobile devices, such as handheld PCs. After leaving PrairieTek, they founded Intégral to focus on the development of even-smaller 1.8-inch hard drives. Intégral was first headquartered at a 16,000-square-foot building in Boulder that served as its administrative headquarters and as a limited manufacturing facility, able to produce up to several thousand drives per month for the sake of small batches and production samples.[1][2] The company initially sought to contract mass manufacturing to an offshore factory Singapore, with groundbreaking to commence some time in 1991.[3][4] Intégral's initial start-up capital came entirely from East Asian countries, including three computer systems manufacturers, six hardware vendors, and one distributor, all of whom pitched in US$7 million in 1990.[5]
Intégral shipped out the first production samples of their 20-MB Mustang 1820 in August 1991.[5][6] By September 1991, construction of the Singapore factory still had not commenced, and its Boulder facility could only produce up to 4,000 drives per month, well below expected projections.[4] Scrambling to find a suitable production partner before competitors encroached on its market, in late December 1991 the company raised an additional $15.5 million in capital and signed a contract with Fuji Electric for the latter to produce Intégral's drives in Singapore.[7] By February 1992, Fuji was producing the Mustang 1820 in bulk,[8] and in March 1992 they began producing Integral's Stingray 1842, a 40-MB, dual-platter, 1.8-inch drive.[9]
By September 1992, Intégral employed 50 people at their Boulder headquarters.[10] The following month, the company announced that they had signed a cross-licensing deal with Quantum Corporation, in which both companies licensed patents from the other in order to diversify their product rosters.[11] Despite decent standalone sales of their hard drives, Integral by this point had yet to score a design win in a prebuilt computer system beyond one Japanese pen tablet computer, the Toshiba Dynanote.[12]
In early 1993, they released their first PC Card hard drives. These drives adopted the same 1.8-inch form factor of their standalone drives but featured a PC Card socket on the end. Around this time, many laptops began carrying PC Card slots internally. Intégral's first drives in this range consisted of the Ranger 1841P and the Cobra 1882P, with a capacity of 40 MB and 85 MB respectively. Intégral engineered the drives to withstand an operating shock rating of 100 g.[13]
Intégral was in 1993 the market leader in the 1.8-inch drive segment, shipping a majority of the 150,000 drives sold that year.[14][15] Its competitors then included MiniStor Peripherals (who earlier in 1992 were the first to ship PC Card hard drives), Aura Associates, Western Digital, and Maxtor.[16] Sales improved as the laptop industry began adopting the PC Card standard en masse, and in November 1993 the company doubled its Singaporean workforce from 29 workers to 56 and saw its monthly production increase twofold as well, from 10,000 drives to 20,000 drives.[15] In 1994, Intégral again dominated the 1.8-inch drive market, which saw disappointing sales that year, shipping only between 250,000 and 500,000 units,[17][18] compared to the projected 3.5 million.[15]
Intégral's 420-MB Cobalt 420 PC Card drive, introduced in October 1994 alongside their mainstream Viper line of PC Card drives, was the first hard drive to feature a multi-chip module IC, necessitated due to its small stature combined with a three-platter, six-head drive assembly.[19] Around this time, Intégral's drives gained broader acceptance among computer systems builders, scoring design wins with Hewlett-Packard for the latter's HP OmniBook subnotebook, with IBM for their ThinkPad notebooks, and with Toshiba and Fujitsu for their pen tablets.[18]
By April 1995, MiniStor had gone bankrupt and Maxtor had exited the field of 1.8-inch drives entirely, leaving Intégral and Calluna Technology as the only remaining makers of 1.8-inch drives.[20][21] Despite cornering 68 percent of the market for 1.8-inch drives,[22] Intégral themselves admitted partial defeat by entering the market for 2.5-inch hard drives in May 1995 with the Platinum line.[21] Helped along by their experience manufacturing 1.8-inch drives,[23] their premier entry in the 2.5-inch drive market, the Platinum/1010, was one of the first 1-GB 2.5-inch drives and the thinnest 1-GB drive available at the time.[21][24] Revenues in the company increased sharply in 1995, to $69 million from $15 million in 1994. By April 1996, Intégral employed 140 workers in the United States and 300 workers globally.[25]
The company was hit hard in 1997 by the concurrent Asian financial crisis causing investors to drop out of Intégral.[26] In early 1998 the company discontinued their flagship 1.8-inch drives,[27] leaving Calluna as the sole contender in that market.[28] Intégral filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in March 1998, with $3.5 million in assets and roughly $25 million in liabilities. They were sold to Mobile Storage—a unit of H&Q Asia Pacific, a private equity firm—for $5.5 million in assets and $1.7 million in license revenues the following June.[26][29]
After leaving Intégral, Volk went on to found DataPlay, a maker of very small (32 mm diameter) optical discs, in Longmont.[30]
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Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
Intégral Peripherals, Inc., or simply Intégral, was an American computer hardware company based in Boulder, Colorado, and active from 1990 to 1998. It was the first company to manufacture hard disk drives with a platter diameter of 1.8 inches, smaller than the typical 2.5-inch hard drives used in laptops and other mobile devices. Initially met with market skepticism, Intégral found success in the mid-1990s with design wins in products by IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Toshiba, among others. However, its investors dropping out of the company amid the 1997 Asian financial crisis caused the company to file bankruptcy in 1998, after which it was acquired by private equity firm H&Q Asia Pacific.
Conner Peripherals, Inc. (commonly referred to as Conner), was a company that manufactured hard drives and tape drives for personal computers. Conner Peripherals was founded in 1985 by Seagate Technology co-founder and San Jose State University alumnus Finis Conner (1943– ). In 1986, it merged with CoData, a Colorado start-up founded by MiniScribe founders Terry Johnson and John Squires. CoData was developing a new type of small hard disk that put the capacity of a 5.25-inch drive into the smaller (and now commonplace) 3.5-inch format.
Computer Peripherals, Inc. (CPI) was an American manufacturer of computer printers, based in Rochester, Michigan. CPI's precursor, Holley Computer Products, was formed as a joint venture between Control Data Corporation (CDC) and the Holley Carburetor Company in April 1962. Holley developed and produced a series of drum printers. In June 1964, CDC bought out Holley and partnered with NCR and ICL to form CPI in Rochester. The facility was located near Rochester Road and Tienken Road, immediately north of North Hill Elementary School. In the early 1970s CPI also had a branch in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. This division made punched card readers and 9-track magnetic tape drives for both parent companies (CDC and NCR). In 1978 CDC bought controlling interest of CPI. CPI produced several train printers under the CDC and Fastrain brands, including the CDC Model 512 (1967), the Fastrain A 1200 LPM (1969) and the Fastrain 9372-III 2000 LPM (1976). In 1977, CPI began manufacturing printers at a factory in Stevenage, Herts, UK that was originally used for the manufacture of ICL1900 computers. By 1979, the factory also made 9-track tape drives which were used in ICL and CDC computers, and were sold with industry-standard interfaces for use with other manufacturer's computers. In 1982, CDC acquired a controlling interest in Centronics in exchange for CPI and $25 million in cash. CPI was merged into Centronics and eventually the Rochester facility was closed.
Atari 8-bit computer peripherals include floppy drives, printers, modems, and video game controllers for Atari 8-bit computers, which includes the 400/800, XL, XE, and XEGS. Some peripherals require separate software, which was usually bundled on cartridge or floppy disk. Because the Atari 400/800 8-bit computers were bundled with an RF modulator, stringent FCC regulations limiting radio emissions applied. Consequently, the Atari 400/800 systems internal construction use large metal frames as Faraday cages to prevent emissions. This prevents the use of internal cards to add connections for peripherals. To permit easy expansion, Atari developed the SIO (Serial Input/Output) bus. This bus daisy chains together all Atari peripherals into a single string. The Atari computer family was designed to be easy for novice users to expand, with one universal connector plug. Peripherals have their own IDs and can deliver downloadable drivers to the computer during the boot process. However, the additional electronics in these "intelligent" peripherals made them cost more than the "dumb" devices for other systems.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Shirley Chisholm, elected in 1968.