Ecrix Corporation today announced that an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) agreement has been reached with Compaq Computer Corporation to sell VXA-1 Tape Drives for its commercial desktops and workstations. Compaq plans to ship both SCSI and high-performance IDE versions of the VXA-1 tape drive within 30 days.
“Our large commercial desktop and workstation installations are rapidly migrating from pure SCSI environments towards a mix of SCSI and IDE,” stated Keith LeFebvre, director, Workstation and Thin Client Business Unit, Access Business Group, Compaq. “VXA-1, with both SCSI and IDE interfaces, enables Compaq to meet the high reliability and performance needs of this mixed market with one technology in lieu of multiple technologies.” Compaq currently sells an IDE version of the Travan drive and a SCSI version of the DDS drive into this market.
“A major OEM endorsement of a new tape technology can have a significant impact on market perception and unit shipments,” states Fara Yale, chief analyst, Computer Storage Service, Gartner Dataquest. “The workstation market has traditionally been a stronghold for DDS tape products; however, because no DDS vendor currently plans to develop future generation DDS drives, an opportunity is presented for other tape technologies to succeed in this part of the market.”
Both SCSI and IDE versions of the VXA-1 tape drive offer capacities up to 66 GB at 6 MB/second (2:1 compression). The VXA-1 IDE tape drive features an Ultra DMA mode 2 interface and the VXA-1 SCSI tape drive has a Fast and Wide SCSI Ultra 2 LVD interface. VXAtape media is interchangeable between drives with both interfaces. VXAtape cartridges are also available in a selection of capacities from 12 GB to 66 GB and sold through a wide selection of resellers, e-tailers and directly from Ecrix.