Maker Pro
Maker Pro

Al Shugart has passed away

M

Mike Monett

Jan 1, 1970
0
The passing of a great man.

Forwarded by Robert J Coombes/Seagate on 12/13/2006 02:41 PM

Sent by : Seagate eMessaging Center
To : All Inside Seagate Users (MAIL)

Because so many of us knew Al, we want to make sure that you have
the opportunity to share your thoughts and reminisce, if you wish.
You'll find our Special Report message posted on Bill's Blog where
you can choose to post your own message if you have something you
want to say.

We have also attached below a speech that Al gave several years ago
at a Seagate company meeting, in which he recalled some highlights
of his career and the founding of our company. We think you will
enjoy it, whether or not you had the opportunity to meet Al.

Steve Luczo and Bill Watkin

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Speech to Seagate Employees at Company Meeting

I see so many new, young faces in the audience today. I'm sure that
many - if not most - of you weren't even born when I began working
on the industry's first disc drive. So I thought this would be a
good time to round out your education, and give you a little
first-hand history.

I came into the computer industry quite by accident. I graduated
from the University of Redlands in 1951 after four years and four
different majors, and took a job with IBM in Santa Monica,
California as a customer engineer (that's field engineer nowadays)
because I could start the day after graduation. The pay was good,
too: $275 per month. I was 20 years old, married, one kid, and dead
broke.

I learned after one week at IBM that field engineers were the lowest
on the totem pole when a field engineer in the office was PROMOTED
to Salesperson. I'll never forget that early lesson, and I've held
it against salespeople ever since.

After having fixed all the troubles one could have with punch card
accounting machines, in 1955, about when Scott McNealy was born, I
transferred to a small IBM R&D lab in downtown San Jose, California.

I won't ever forget the day that Don Johnson, one of the pioneers in
disc development, invited me over to see how he created his discs.
He was rotating this giant 24-inch platter. Then he poured a
solution of iron oxide on the disc from a Dixie Cup. No clean room,
equipment so crude that we rotated the disc with a foot pedal. And
that dixie cup didn't look out of place at all.

I certainly had no idea I was walking into the beginning of a
technology and product development program that would have such a
profound impact upon the computer industry.

The First Disc Drive

Using the accepted `big blue' approach, we made our disc drive big.
Using these crude techniques, we produced a disc that supported a
recording density of 2000 bits per square inch with 100 bits per
inch and 20 tracks per inch. We stacked fifty of the 24-inch discs
on a vertical shaft, and had a disc file that would store five
million characters. And it weighed only One Ton! Average access time
was a screaming 1-and a half seconds, and we spun the disc at 1200
rpm. No fire code, no ECC, no address marks, no flags for spare
tracks. It should have made the controller easy, but it didn't. We
didn't even know how to clock data without a clock track. Oh, by the
way, the electronics were all in vacuum tubes. No volumes of
semiconductors to choose from.

Who Could Use This Much Storage

Now that we had this big drive, we had a bigger marketing concern.
Who could ever use this much storage? Five million characters was a
lot. Notice that I said characters. This was long before the days of
the 8-bit byte. A character was six data bits and one parity bit.
Dark Ages!

RAMAC

Our magnetic head technology was equally crude. Although we had
learned a lot from drum recording technology, the disc presented its
own set of problems. To create an air bearing to separate the head
from the disc, we routed compressed air through tiny orifices in the
head carrier. We used this same air supply to load the head.
Unfortunately, this required a big supply of external air. In fact,
the thing required so much air that we could use a total of only two
heads to serve the one hundred disc surfaces.

To reach another disc, the two heads were unloaded, removed
horizontally from the disc stack, then moved vertically to the
desired disc, then horizontally again to the desired track, then
loaded. This was a lot of mass, moving pretty fast, and the file
really rocked in its shock mounts during accessing.

Actually, it worked pretty well. After all, users thought in terms
of seconds per function, not milliseconds and nanoseconds. And we
gave the user five million characters of storage for a rental cost
of about $750 per month. Of course, this didn't include the
controller or the air compressor you needed to supply all that
external air.

I believe that IBM built about 5000 of these files. Most of them
were used in a system called RAMAC or Random Access Method of
Accounting.

A Better Air Bearing

During these early production years of the RAMAC file, we were
looking for a better air bearing. Then sometime during the late
fifties, a set of articles in the IBM Journal of Research &
Development discussed a very old principle - the self-acting air
bearing or slider. These articles became the bible for anyone
interested in disc files.

The self-acting air bearing did not require an external air supply.
This meant we could place a magnetic head on each disc surface.

IBM Advanced Disc File

What a breakthrough. IBM introduced another 24-inch diameter disc
file called the ADF, or Advanced Disc File. Although it was about
the same size as our first RAMAC, it stored ten times as much data -
50 million bytes. And by eliminating head movement between discs, we
cut the average access time to 165 milliseconds. Recording density
was also improved by a factor of 20 - 25,000 bits per square inch
with 500 bits per inch at a track density of 50 tracks per inch.

Many people read the Journal articles, our bible, and it wasn't long
before IBM had some competition. Two early competitors that I
remember were Telex and Bryant.

I do have to credit IBM management. They backed the disc as the
random access technology of the future. In fact, they bet all their
marbles on the new disc files. On the other hand, Univac chose the
magnetic drum rather than the disc. It wasn't the only bad decision
by Univac, but it ranks right up there with the worst.

Disc Pack/Standard 14-inch disc

In the early sixties, as IBM's first disc file with slider bearing
heads went into production, we came up with another breakthrough.
This was the removable disc pack. And for the first time, we see the
disc size that was to become the standard - a 14-inch diameter disc.

It began with a pack holding about 3 million bytes, then the real
standard, a disc pack that carried 7.5 million bytes.

Capacities Grew

Capacities continued to grow. The next pack held 29 million bytes.
The recording density was now 220,000 bits per square inch or almost
100 times greater density than the first RAMAC file. This same
general technology carried through to IBM's first track following
servo, with an aerial recording density of 1.5 million bits per
square inch.

Technology Limits/The Winchester

It's at this point that removable discs began hitting some
technology limits. The height of the air bearing and the possibility
of contamination were tough barriers for removable disc packs to
overcome. The infamous head crash became an ever-present danger.
This led to the development of the first hermetically sealed disc
drive - IBM's Winchester.

Winchester technology featured low mass, lightly loaded heads,
starting and stopping in contact with the disc.

More Improvements Needed/Fixed Discs

But improvements were still necessary. The disc packs, now sealed in
a data module, were still removable and still expensive, so discs
became fixed to further increase the recording density. Linear bit
density was increased to 6425 bits per inch, and an incredible
aerial density of over 3 million bits per square inch was achieved.
This was followed by an aerial recording density of 7.8 million bits
per square inch.

Compare this with the 2000 bits per square inch of the first RAMAC
file. Density had improved by 3900 times.

And Then There Was The Floppy

As we reminisce about old times, we shouldn't forget about a
critical parallel development in data storage - the humble but
ubiquitous floppy.

The floppy disc was actually the result of advances in semiconductor
technology. Here's why:

In the early sixties with the introduction of the IBM 360, control
memory was employed to a great extent in both CPU's and peripheral
controllers. This control storage was implemented in read only
memory, because magnetic core and semiconductor memory were much too
expensive.

However, by the time the IBM 370 was developed, semiconductor
technology had advanced. Now, control storage could be implemented
in semiconductor memory. Since this memory was volatile, a loading
device was necessary. Magnetic tape was considered but the need for
loading diagnostics as well as the control program seriously
detracted from the desirability of this approach. Why not a cheap
disc that would provide the random access speed needed for
diagnostic loading?

With such a low cost disc, you would have an economical, random
access, program-loading device. And once such a device was
available, why not add a write capability for logging?

So semiconductor technology and the big IBM 370 set the stage for
the floppy, the data storage that in turn, helped to launch the
small systems revolution.

Many of us saw the great potential of this little disc. That's why I
formed my first company, Shugart Associates, in 1973.

On To Seagate

I was lucky to have played a role in the early days of floppies at
Shugart Associates, and it led to a much more long-lived role at
Seagate starting several years later.

The start of Seagate is sort of interesting, so I'd like to tell you
about it.

In late September 1979, the desktop computer market was going
bananas. Millions of units were being shipped annually and most of
them had a small auxiliary memory device called a minifloppy disc
drive. These minifloppies were a reduced size version of the
original floppy disc drive introduced in volume about 5 years early
by Shugart Associates.

I had been working around computers and disc drive memories for over
25 years, and had discovered one fundamental that transcends
computer systems of any size; and that is: A computer system's
appetite for memory is insatiable.

And that was and is true for even very small computers. As more and
more applications were put on these systems, the memory requirements
grew. And in late 1979, these additional memory requirements were
being met by adding a second and third and fourth minifloppy disc
drive.

And Then Came Finis

Finis Conner, who joined me as a founder of Shugart Associates, came
to me in late September of 1979 with the idea to build a fixed,
rigid disc drive the same physical size as the minifloppy, with
higher performance and higher reliability, and with 15 times the
storage capacity at 3 times the cost. He said that if this were
possible, he could sell to every desktop computer manufacturer that
was shipping systems with more than one minifloppy; that is, our
device would fill the memory need for more than one minifloppy.

I thought this was possible so we decided to go into business. On
October 1, 1979, Finis and I hacked out an 8-page business plan that
predicated our nearly taking over the world, and very quickly - it
was a very, very aggressive plan. It had to be. Finis and I had both
run out of money and our personal habits needed recapitalizing.

The Search For Venture Capital

Each of us kicked in $10,000 and hit the road with our plan. We
found a mechanical engineer, an electrical engineer, and an
operations manager very quickly. It seems get-rich-quick schemes are
easy to sell to poor people. We decided to let my daughter, Terry,
who was in college, kept the books until we could afford a financial
officer, since she worked cheap.

Finding the money to finance the venture wasn't quite that easy. We
reasoned that our idea was worth $2 million dollars, and that we
would sell 25% of our plan for $500,000.

Page Mill Group

Our first stop was the Page Mill Group, a venture capital firm made
up of very successful people from the electronics industry. They
would surely see the wisdom in what we were doing. Bob Noyce, Lester
Hogan, John Young, Ken Oshman, and several other equally famous and
successful people.

After my presentation, John Young, who, if you don't know, was the
president of Hewlett -Packard, said: `Al, why should we pay half a
million dollars for only 25% of a company that's only an idea in the
minds of you and Finis?'

I said: `John, perhaps you shouldn't.' And they didn't! (Finis said
I needed to brush up on my marketing technique).

Exxon et. al.

But Finis and I decided that perhaps they didn't have enough money.
So we set our sights on bigger bucks. We knew that the Exxon
Corporation made venture investments, and Exxon seemed to have a
good balance sheet and a lot of cash. So we made an appointment with
the Exxon guy in New York who handled that sort of thing and we flew
off to New York.

We arrived early in the evening the day before the meeting, and went
out for a really nice dinner. We decided to celebrate this big deal
we were going to close in the morning, so we got a bottle of really
fine (and expensive) wine. When we returned to the hotel, there was
a message from the Exxon guy that said he had to leave town, the
meeting was canceled, and he would call us in a few weeks. That was
an expensive call.

But we weren't discouraged. Following that, we got turned down by
the Mayfield Fund, and Idanta Partners, and several funds didn't
even return our calls.

But we still weren't discouraged. And money wasn't our only problem.
We needed a disc, and let me explain how important THAT was.

We Needed A Disc - 3M

In a rigid disc drive in those days, the data was magnetically
recorded on an oxide coated aluminum disc. There was a great deal of
technology, and a lot of tooling money involved in producing
magnetic discs. We needed a commitment from a magnetic disc
manufacturer to develop and manufacture a disc that was a different
physical size from any in the industry. It would require a
manufacturer to not only spend a lot of money on developing the
disc, but an even greater amount in tooling for production. The
total dollar requirement for this made our monetary needs seem
small.

So first we flew to Minneapolis to see the 3M Corporation. The 3M
people were very interested in the project, but they couldn't do
anything because our schedule was inconsistent with their view of
reality.

But they were really nice people and agreed to help our effort to
get the company off the ground by cutting down some larger discs to
the required 5.25-inch size we needed. And even though the center
hole of the disc was larger than we could tolerate in actual use,
the disc should serve as a good visual aid.

While we were waiting for the 3M sample discs, we called on Memorex,
but they never called us back. Within several days, 3M
hand-delivered 6 disc samples to me in California, just to help us
get going.

Dysan

With the disc samples in hand, we called on Norm Dion, president of
Dysan Corporation in Santa Clara, a magnetic disc manufacturer. I
handed Norm one of the sample 5.25-inch discs and he just held it
and stared at it for what seemed like hours (probably 15 seconds).
Dysan was just getting into production of an 8-inch disc, having
manufactured 14-inch discs for several years. Finally, Norm said:
`You know, 8 inches was the wrong size.' I figured we had him at
that point. He saw the tremendous future in what we wanted to do,
and agreed to develop and manufacture the 5.25-inch disc.

Then he asked us how we were doing on getting financed. Not wanting
to show any weakness, I told him we expected to close something
soon, trying to keep my voice from cracking. He said that was a
shame since he thought it would make a good package for Dysan to
fund our development effort as well as commit to the disc.

We quickly saw the wisdom in this and, on November 14, 1979, six
weeks after we put our plan together; Norm gave me a check for
$10,000, as a show of good faith for his agreement to invest
$500,000. We shook hands, and we had a deal.

We had always planned to get the lawyers to document the deal, but
we never got around to it, and it was never really necessary. The
following June, we raised another million dollars in capital through
venture capitalists - they DID need to document the deal. So the
total venture capital put into Seagate was only $1.5 million. An
unbelievably small amount of money by today's standards.

We Needed Parts - Turn Left At Leo’s Liquors

It was tough to find more believers at that time. We had 8 people in
the loft of a suite in Scotts Valley, and we needed to place orders
for parts; some big orders.

We knew we had to get magnetic heads on order quickly so we called
the manufacturer's representative. I told him we wanted to buy
100,000 magnetic heads (at the time this was about a $2 million
deal). He said he's come to see us. Where were we located, he asked.
He had never heard of Scotts Valley.

I gave him directions... come down out of the mountains, turn onto
Santa's Village road, go a quarter of a mile, turn left at Leo's
Liquors, cross a little bridge and go into suite C in the only
building there.

He repeated the directions and then said: `And you want to buy
100,000 magnetic heads?' I expected him to say, `come on now, who
is this?'

Product Development

We completed our product development in 5 1/2 months and showed our
product in a hotel suite at the National Computer Conference in
Anaheim in May of 1980. We got orders during that show including a
$200,000 prepayment, and began shipments 6 weeks later.

We shipped 50 units our first month, and by October we were shipping
10 units a day out of a 1000 square foot lab.

The ST506 disc drive stored 6.38 million bytes of data and sold for
$1,500 in single quantities: down to $775 in quantities of 5,000.

A Huge Market

The market for this size disc drive was quite large. We projected
that the worldwide market would grow from 1100 units in 1980 - which
was our total production output - to one million units in 1983. And
although our projected shipment grew at an astounding rate, we told
people that we didn't predict being able to maintain the 100% market
share we enjoyed in 1980. In addition to Texas Instruments and
CII-Honeywell Bull whom we had licensed to manufacture and market
the product as a second source, we did expect to see several
competitors in the marketplace later in 1981.

In our first full operating year we did about $12 million in
revenues and made about $1.8 million net profit.

Things moved so fast that we had an initial public offering of our
stock only 22 months from when we started.

What Makes The Great Opportunities Possible?

So what really makes these great opportunities? The availability of
capital? Certainly. But I really think it has more to do with
changes in our society. Let me talk a little about that.

When I was working at IBM, the corporation organized a science
advisory board made up of a group of very distinguished scientists.
This group met periodically with IBM management and senior technical
people to give us the benefit of their wisdom and learning.

I was quite fortunate when in the 1960's I was invited to a luncheon
with the science advisory board in San Jose, along with other senior
technical people from the lab I worked at.

Following lunch, the IBM host asked the members of this advisory
board if they would each comment on the terrible unrest that was
going on in our universities, and the apparent change in behavior of
all our younger people.

If you don't remember or weren't around at the time, the 1960's
found a lot of our young people in jail for acts against public
policy. I recall one columnist writing that while he was driving
down the road he saw a sign that said `free firewood,' and his
immediate thought was: Who is this guy Firewood, and why is he in
jail?

Anyway, each of the 6 or so distinguished scientists addressed the
subject:

Norbert Weiner, the famous nuclear physicist and Nobel Prize winner,
began and expressed great disappointment in our youth with their
erratic behavior, and concluded that we were going downhill. The
following speakers expressed the same disappointment, and offered
theories on the behavior, and proposals for fixing it.

The opinion was generally unanimous until the last distinguished
scientist spoke. I can't recall his name but I can picture him
clearly. He was a world-renowned mathematician, long since retired
from his position at Columbia. This quite elderly, gray-haired
gentleman said that what was going on with our young people was the
result of a change in society that was underway - and that he was
both pleased and excited about it. He mentioned individualism,
opportunity, creativity, and a true thinking and nourishing of
society. He said we could close our eyes and hide from the change,
or open our eyes and participate in it - because it was changing
anyway. And he had no fear of the future.

(I thought at the time - `Easy for him to say; the old bugger is in
his 80's and won't be around when these crazies are running the
country').

But you know, the man was absolutely right. We were seeing an
expression of individualism as a result of a change in society that
had begun, and is still in process, and will continue as long as
people have ideas.

The Information Society

We've moved from a mass industrial society to an INFORMATION
Society, with a much more profound impact than the 19th century
shift from an agricultural society to an industrial society.

We've moved to an age of the power of the individual. Where the
strategic resource in the industrial society was capital; the
strategic resource in the postindustrial society is Information and
Knowledge. And that's not only renewable, but it's self-generating
as well.

I believe that this provides for tremendous entrepreneurial activity
in the world today. Because the strategic resource is now what we
have in our heads. Access to the system is much easier. We have seen
an impressive increase in the creation of small businesses over the
last 20 years, and large institutions have restructured to encourage
entrepreneurial activity within decentralized organizations.

In 1950, 65% of the people working in the country were working in
the industrial sector, and only 17% in the information sector.
Today, we've flipped that.

The age of the individual has brought decentralization. We have seen
large airlines collapse while new local and regional airlines have
been established.

Large circulation, general-purpose magazines have folded while
thousands of special interest magazines are being published.

Great umbrella organizations like the American Medical Association
continue to weaken as the groups within it - pediatricians, plastic
surgeons, and cardiologists - specialize and get stronger, along
with county and local medical groups.

And it's happening all over the world. This great new age of
individualism and its subsequent decentralization has led to the
great number of opportunities for new leaders today.

Unfortunately, the age of individualism and special interest groups
has also found a lot of jobs for a lot of lawyers, who are misusing
our legal system. But that's a story for another time.

Seagate is a leader in the new Information society. Seagate is in
the Information business. We have not only survived, but thrived by
preparing for, and embracing what we know is inevitable - CHANGE. We
are leaders. So we will go out there again this year and do what we
do best: `Find a parade, and get in front of it!'
 
P

PeteS

Jan 1, 1970
0
Mike said:
The passing of a great man.

Forwarded by Robert J Coombes/Seagate on 12/13/2006 02:41 PM

Sent by : Seagate eMessaging Center
To : All Inside Seagate Users (MAIL)

Because so many of us knew Al, we want to make sure that you have
the opportunity to share your thoughts and reminisce, if you wish.
You'll find our Special Report message posted on Bill's Blog where
you can choose to post your own message if you have something you
want to say.

We have also attached below a speech that Al gave several years ago
at a Seagate company meeting, in which he recalled some highlights
of his career and the founding of our company. We think you will
enjoy it, whether or not you had the opportunity to meet Al.

Steve Luczo and Bill Watkin

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Speech to Seagate Employees at Company Meeting

I see so many new, young faces in the audience today. I'm sure that
many - if not most - of you weren't even born when I began working
on the industry's first disc drive. So I thought this would be a
good time to round out your education, and give you a little
first-hand history.

I came into the computer industry quite by accident. I graduated
from the University of Redlands in 1951 after four years and four
different majors, and took a job with IBM in Santa Monica,
California as a customer engineer (that's field engineer nowadays)
because I could start the day after graduation. The pay was good,
too: $275 per month. I was 20 years old, married, one kid, and dead
broke.

I learned after one week at IBM that field engineers were the lowest
on the totem pole when a field engineer in the office was PROMOTED
to Salesperson. I'll never forget that early lesson, and I've held
it against salespeople ever since.

After having fixed all the troubles one could have with punch card
accounting machines, in 1955, about when Scott McNealy was born, I
transferred to a small IBM R&D lab in downtown San Jose, California.

I won't ever forget the day that Don Johnson, one of the pioneers in
disc development, invited me over to see how he created his discs.
He was rotating this giant 24-inch platter. Then he poured a
solution of iron oxide on the disc from a Dixie Cup. No clean room,
equipment so crude that we rotated the disc with a foot pedal. And
that dixie cup didn't look out of place at all.

I certainly had no idea I was walking into the beginning of a
technology and product development program that would have such a
profound impact upon the computer industry.

The First Disc Drive

Using the accepted `big blue' approach, we made our disc drive big.
Using these crude techniques, we produced a disc that supported a
recording density of 2000 bits per square inch with 100 bits per
inch and 20 tracks per inch. We stacked fifty of the 24-inch discs
on a vertical shaft, and had a disc file that would store five
million characters. And it weighed only One Ton! Average access time
was a screaming 1-and a half seconds, and we spun the disc at 1200
rpm. No fire code, no ECC, no address marks, no flags for spare
tracks. It should have made the controller easy, but it didn't. We
didn't even know how to clock data without a clock track. Oh, by the
way, the electronics were all in vacuum tubes. No volumes of
semiconductors to choose from.

Who Could Use This Much Storage

Now that we had this big drive, we had a bigger marketing concern.
Who could ever use this much storage? Five million characters was a
lot. Notice that I said characters. This was long before the days of
the 8-bit byte. A character was six data bits and one parity bit.
Dark Ages!

RAMAC

Our magnetic head technology was equally crude. Although we had
learned a lot from drum recording technology, the disc presented its
own set of problems. To create an air bearing to separate the head
from the disc, we routed compressed air through tiny orifices in the
head carrier. We used this same air supply to load the head.
Unfortunately, this required a big supply of external air. In fact,
the thing required so much air that we could use a total of only two
heads to serve the one hundred disc surfaces.

To reach another disc, the two heads were unloaded, removed
horizontally from the disc stack, then moved vertically to the
desired disc, then horizontally again to the desired track, then
loaded. This was a lot of mass, moving pretty fast, and the file
really rocked in its shock mounts during accessing.

Actually, it worked pretty well. After all, users thought in terms
of seconds per function, not milliseconds and nanoseconds. And we
gave the user five million characters of storage for a rental cost
of about $750 per month. Of course, this didn't include the
controller or the air compressor you needed to supply all that
external air.

I believe that IBM built about 5000 of these files. Most of them
were used in a system called RAMAC or Random Access Method of
Accounting.

A Better Air Bearing

During these early production years of the RAMAC file, we were
looking for a better air bearing. Then sometime during the late
fifties, a set of articles in the IBM Journal of Research &
Development discussed a very old principle - the self-acting air
bearing or slider. These articles became the bible for anyone
interested in disc files.

The self-acting air bearing did not require an external air supply.
This meant we could place a magnetic head on each disc surface.

IBM Advanced Disc File

What a breakthrough. IBM introduced another 24-inch diameter disc
file called the ADF, or Advanced Disc File. Although it was about
the same size as our first RAMAC, it stored ten times as much data -
50 million bytes. And by eliminating head movement between discs, we
cut the average access time to 165 milliseconds. Recording density
was also improved by a factor of 20 - 25,000 bits per square inch
with 500 bits per inch at a track density of 50 tracks per inch.

Many people read the Journal articles, our bible, and it wasn't long
before IBM had some competition. Two early competitors that I
remember were Telex and Bryant.

I do have to credit IBM management. They backed the disc as the
random access technology of the future. In fact, they bet all their
marbles on the new disc files. On the other hand, Univac chose the
magnetic drum rather than the disc. It wasn't the only bad decision
by Univac, but it ranks right up there with the worst.

Disc Pack/Standard 14-inch disc

In the early sixties, as IBM's first disc file with slider bearing
heads went into production, we came up with another breakthrough.
This was the removable disc pack. And for the first time, we see the
disc size that was to become the standard - a 14-inch diameter disc.

It began with a pack holding about 3 million bytes, then the real
standard, a disc pack that carried 7.5 million bytes.

Capacities Grew

Capacities continued to grow. The next pack held 29 million bytes.
The recording density was now 220,000 bits per square inch or almost
100 times greater density than the first RAMAC file. This same
general technology carried through to IBM's first track following
servo, with an aerial recording density of 1.5 million bits per
square inch.

Technology Limits/The Winchester

It's at this point that removable discs began hitting some
technology limits. The height of the air bearing and the possibility
of contamination were tough barriers for removable disc packs to
overcome. The infamous head crash became an ever-present danger.
This led to the development of the first hermetically sealed disc
drive - IBM's Winchester.

Winchester technology featured low mass, lightly loaded heads,
starting and stopping in contact with the disc.

More Improvements Needed/Fixed Discs

But improvements were still necessary. The disc packs, now sealed in
a data module, were still removable and still expensive, so discs
became fixed to further increase the recording density. Linear bit
density was increased to 6425 bits per inch, and an incredible
aerial density of over 3 million bits per square inch was achieved.
This was followed by an aerial recording density of 7.8 million bits
per square inch.

Compare this with the 2000 bits per square inch of the first RAMAC
file. Density had improved by 3900 times.

And Then There Was The Floppy

As we reminisce about old times, we shouldn't forget about a
critical parallel development in data storage - the humble but
ubiquitous floppy.

The floppy disc was actually the result of advances in semiconductor
technology. Here's why:

In the early sixties with the introduction of the IBM 360, control
memory was employed to a great extent in both CPU's and peripheral
controllers. This control storage was implemented in read only
memory, because magnetic core and semiconductor memory were much too
expensive.

However, by the time the IBM 370 was developed, semiconductor
technology had advanced. Now, control storage could be implemented
in semiconductor memory. Since this memory was volatile, a loading
device was necessary. Magnetic tape was considered but the need for
loading diagnostics as well as the control program seriously
detracted from the desirability of this approach. Why not a cheap
disc that would provide the random access speed needed for
diagnostic loading?

With such a low cost disc, you would have an economical, random
access, program-loading device. And once such a device was
available, why not add a write capability for logging?

So semiconductor technology and the big IBM 370 set the stage for
the floppy, the data storage that in turn, helped to launch the
small systems revolution.

Many of us saw the great potential of this little disc. That's why I
formed my first company, Shugart Associates, in 1973.

On To Seagate

I was lucky to have played a role in the early days of floppies at
Shugart Associates, and it led to a much more long-lived role at
Seagate starting several years later.

The start of Seagate is sort of interesting, so I'd like to tell you
about it.

In late September 1979, the desktop computer market was going
bananas. Millions of units were being shipped annually and most of
them had a small auxiliary memory device called a minifloppy disc
drive. These minifloppies were a reduced size version of the
original floppy disc drive introduced in volume about 5 years early
by Shugart Associates.

I had been working around computers and disc drive memories for over
25 years, and had discovered one fundamental that transcends
computer systems of any size; and that is: A computer system's
appetite for memory is insatiable.

And that was and is true for even very small computers. As more and
more applications were put on these systems, the memory requirements
grew. And in late 1979, these additional memory requirements were
being met by adding a second and third and fourth minifloppy disc
drive.

And Then Came Finis

Finis Conner, who joined me as a founder of Shugart Associates, came
to me in late September of 1979 with the idea to build a fixed,
rigid disc drive the same physical size as the minifloppy, with
higher performance and higher reliability, and with 15 times the
storage capacity at 3 times the cost. He said that if this were
possible, he could sell to every desktop computer manufacturer that
was shipping systems with more than one minifloppy; that is, our
device would fill the memory need for more than one minifloppy.

I thought this was possible so we decided to go into business. On
October 1, 1979, Finis and I hacked out an 8-page business plan that
predicated our nearly taking over the world, and very quickly - it
was a very, very aggressive plan. It had to be. Finis and I had both
run out of money and our personal habits needed recapitalizing.

The Search For Venture Capital

Each of us kicked in $10,000 and hit the road with our plan. We
found a mechanical engineer, an electrical engineer, and an
operations manager very quickly. It seems get-rich-quick schemes are
easy to sell to poor people. We decided to let my daughter, Terry,
who was in college, kept the books until we could afford a financial
officer, since she worked cheap.

Finding the money to finance the venture wasn't quite that easy. We
reasoned that our idea was worth $2 million dollars, and that we
would sell 25% of our plan for $500,000.

Page Mill Group

Our first stop was the Page Mill Group, a venture capital firm made
up of very successful people from the electronics industry. They
would surely see the wisdom in what we were doing. Bob Noyce, Lester
Hogan, John Young, Ken Oshman, and several other equally famous and
successful people.

After my presentation, John Young, who, if you don't know, was the
president of Hewlett -Packard, said: `Al, why should we pay half a
million dollars for only 25% of a company that's only an idea in the
minds of you and Finis?'

I said: `John, perhaps you shouldn't.' And they didn't! (Finis said
I needed to brush up on my marketing technique).

Exxon et. al.

But Finis and I decided that perhaps they didn't have enough money.
So we set our sights on bigger bucks. We knew that the Exxon
Corporation made venture investments, and Exxon seemed to have a
good balance sheet and a lot of cash. So we made an appointment with
the Exxon guy in New York who handled that sort of thing and we flew
off to New York.

We arrived early in the evening the day before the meeting, and went
out for a really nice dinner. We decided to celebrate this big deal
we were going to close in the morning, so we got a bottle of really
fine (and expensive) wine. When we returned to the hotel, there was
a message from the Exxon guy that said he had to leave town, the
meeting was canceled, and he would call us in a few weeks. That was
an expensive call.

But we weren't discouraged. Following that, we got turned down by
the Mayfield Fund, and Idanta Partners, and several funds didn't
even return our calls.

But we still weren't discouraged. And money wasn't our only problem.
We needed a disc, and let me explain how important THAT was.

We Needed A Disc - 3M

In a rigid disc drive in those days, the data was magnetically
recorded on an oxide coated aluminum disc. There was a great deal of
technology, and a lot of tooling money involved in producing
magnetic discs. We needed a commitment from a magnetic disc
manufacturer to develop and manufacture a disc that was a different
physical size from any in the industry. It would require a
manufacturer to not only spend a lot of money on developing the
disc, but an even greater amount in tooling for production. The
total dollar requirement for this made our monetary needs seem
small.

So first we flew to Minneapolis to see the 3M Corporation. The 3M
people were very interested in the project, but they couldn't do
anything because our schedule was inconsistent with their view of
reality.

But they were really nice people and agreed to help our effort to
get the company off the ground by cutting down some larger discs to
the required 5.25-inch size we needed. And even though the center
hole of the disc was larger than we could tolerate in actual use,
the disc should serve as a good visual aid.

While we were waiting for the 3M sample discs, we called on Memorex,
but they never called us back. Within several days, 3M
hand-delivered 6 disc samples to me in California, just to help us
get going.

Dysan

With the disc samples in hand, we called on Norm Dion, president of
Dysan Corporation in Santa Clara, a magnetic disc manufacturer. I
handed Norm one of the sample 5.25-inch discs and he just held it
and stared at it for what seemed like hours (probably 15 seconds).
Dysan was just getting into production of an 8-inch disc, having
manufactured 14-inch discs for several years. Finally, Norm said:
`You know, 8 inches was the wrong size.' I figured we had him at
that point. He saw the tremendous future in what we wanted to do,
and agreed to develop and manufacture the 5.25-inch disc.

Then he asked us how we were doing on getting financed. Not wanting
to show any weakness, I told him we expected to close something
soon, trying to keep my voice from cracking. He said that was a
shame since he thought it would make a good package for Dysan to
fund our development effort as well as commit to the disc.

We quickly saw the wisdom in this and, on November 14, 1979, six
weeks after we put our plan together; Norm gave me a check for
$10,000, as a show of good faith for his agreement to invest
$500,000. We shook hands, and we had a deal.

We had always planned to get the lawyers to document the deal, but
we never got around to it, and it was never really necessary. The
following June, we raised another million dollars in capital through
venture capitalists - they DID need to document the deal. So the
total venture capital put into Seagate was only $1.5 million. An
unbelievably small amount of money by today's standards.

We Needed Parts - Turn Left At Leo’s Liquors

It was tough to find more believers at that time. We had 8 people in
the loft of a suite in Scotts Valley, and we needed to place orders
for parts; some big orders.

We knew we had to get magnetic heads on order quickly so we called
the manufacturer's representative. I told him we wanted to buy
100,000 magnetic heads (at the time this was about a $2 million
deal). He said he's come to see us. Where were we located, he asked.
He had never heard of Scotts Valley.

I gave him directions... come down out of the mountains, turn onto
Santa's Village road, go a quarter of a mile, turn left at Leo's
Liquors, cross a little bridge and go into suite C in the only
building there.

He repeated the directions and then said: `And you want to buy
100,000 magnetic heads?' I expected him to say, `come on now, who
is this?'

Product Development

We completed our product development in 5 1/2 months and showed our
product in a hotel suite at the National Computer Conference in
Anaheim in May of 1980. We got orders during that show including a
$200,000 prepayment, and began shipments 6 weeks later.

We shipped 50 units our first month, and by October we were shipping
10 units a day out of a 1000 square foot lab.

The ST506 disc drive stored 6.38 million bytes of data and sold for
$1,500 in single quantities: down to $775 in quantities of 5,000.

A Huge Market

The market for this size disc drive was quite large. We projected
that the worldwide market would grow from 1100 units in 1980 - which
was our total production output - to one million units in 1983. And
although our projected shipment grew at an astounding rate, we told
people that we didn't predict being able to maintain the 100% market
share we enjoyed in 1980. In addition to Texas Instruments and
CII-Honeywell Bull whom we had licensed to manufacture and market
the product as a second source, we did expect to see several
competitors in the marketplace later in 1981.

In our first full operating year we did about $12 million in
revenues and made about $1.8 million net profit.

Things moved so fast that we had an initial public offering of our
stock only 22 months from when we started.

What Makes The Great Opportunities Possible?

So what really makes these great opportunities? The availability of
capital? Certainly. But I really think it has more to do with
changes in our society. Let me talk a little about that.

When I was working at IBM, the corporation organized a science
advisory board made up of a group of very distinguished scientists.
This group met periodically with IBM management and senior technical
people to give us the benefit of their wisdom and learning.

I was quite fortunate when in the 1960's I was invited to a luncheon
with the science advisory board in San Jose, along with other senior
technical people from the lab I worked at.

Following lunch, the IBM host asked the members of this advisory
board if they would each comment on the terrible unrest that was
going on in our universities, and the apparent change in behavior of
all our younger people.

If you don't remember or weren't around at the time, the 1960's
found a lot of our young people in jail for acts against public
policy. I recall one columnist writing that while he was driving
down the road he saw a sign that said `free firewood,' and his
immediate thought was: Who is this guy Firewood, and why is he in
jail?

Anyway, each of the 6 or so distinguished scientists addressed the
subject:

Norbert Weiner, the famous nuclear physicist and Nobel Prize winner,
began and expressed great disappointment in our youth with their
erratic behavior, and concluded that we were going downhill. The
following speakers expressed the same disappointment, and offered
theories on the behavior, and proposals for fixing it.

The opinion was generally unanimous until the last distinguished
scientist spoke. I can't recall his name but I can picture him
clearly. He was a world-renowned mathematician, long since retired
from his position at Columbia. This quite elderly, gray-haired
gentleman said that what was going on with our young people was the
result of a change in society that was underway - and that he was
both pleased and excited about it. He mentioned individualism,
opportunity, creativity, and a true thinking and nourishing of
society. He said we could close our eyes and hide from the change,
or open our eyes and participate in it - because it was changing
anyway. And he had no fear of the future.

(I thought at the time - `Easy for him to say; the old bugger is in
his 80's and won't be around when these crazies are running the
country').

But you know, the man was absolutely right. We were seeing an
expression of individualism as a result of a change in society that
had begun, and is still in process, and will continue as long as
people have ideas.

The Information Society

We've moved from a mass industrial society to an INFORMATION
Society, with a much more profound impact than the 19th century
shift from an agricultural society to an industrial society.

We've moved to an age of the power of the individual. Where the
strategic resource in the industrial society was capital; the
strategic resource in the postindustrial society is Information and
Knowledge. And that's not only renewable, but it's self-generating
as well.

I believe that this provides for tremendous entrepreneurial activity
in the world today. Because the strategic resource is now what we
have in our heads. Access to the system is much easier. We have seen
an impressive increase in the creation of small businesses over the
last 20 years, and large institutions have restructured to encourage
entrepreneurial activity within decentralized organizations.

In 1950, 65% of the people working in the country were working in
the industrial sector, and only 17% in the information sector.
Today, we've flipped that.

The age of the individual has brought decentralization. We have seen
large airlines collapse while new local and regional airlines have
been established.

Large circulation, general-purpose magazines have folded while
thousands of special interest magazines are being published.

Great umbrella organizations like the American Medical Association
continue to weaken as the groups within it - pediatricians, plastic
surgeons, and cardiologists - specialize and get stronger, along
with county and local medical groups.

And it's happening all over the world. This great new age of
individualism and its subsequent decentralization has led to the
great number of opportunities for new leaders today.

Unfortunately, the age of individualism and special interest groups
has also found a lot of jobs for a lot of lawyers, who are misusing
our legal system. But that's a story for another time.

Seagate is a leader in the new Information society. Seagate is in
the Information business. We have not only survived, but thrived by
preparing for, and embracing what we know is inevitable - CHANGE. We
are leaders. So we will go out there again this year and do what we
do best: `Find a parade, and get in front of it!'

Thanks for posting that

Cheers

PeteS
 
M

Mike Monett

Jan 1, 1970
0
PeteS said:
Mike Monett wrote:
The passing of a great man.
[...]

Thanks for posting that

PeteS

You are very welcome. Most people don't know the tremendous effect
Al had on the PC computing industry. For example, when he developed
the first 5.25" drive, the ST-506, he published the interface specs
and invited anyone to enter the business and use the same interface.

This encouraged over 220 companies to start manufacturing 5.25" hard
disk drives. The resulting competition drove the price down and
increased the performance. We all benefited, especially Bill Gates.
Windows 3.1 came on floppies, but it needed a hard disk to run.

Al really was a great person to work for. Here's a brief excerpt
that shows the kind of person he was:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Al Goes International

Conner's old friend and competitor, Al Shugart, is busier than
ever since he was ousted from the top slot of Seagate in July.
He's got so much going on, he's a virtual walking gossip column.
He now sits on the boards of seven companies: flash vendor
Sandisk, Internet search company Inktomi, lithium/polymer battery
maker Valence Technology, chipmaker Cypress Semi, 3D optical
memory vendor OptiTek, digital camera chip designer Sierra
Imaging, and digital TV IC designer Sarnoff Digital
Communications. All those boards still don't keep Shugart busy.
He's looking to join three more, but he's picky. "I've turned down
a lot of offers," he says. "It has to be interesting."

About Al's Dog.

The word "interesting" has a whole different meaning for Shugart.
His interests include involvement in "Friends of Ernest," a
self-described political advocacy group named after his Bernese
Mountain dog, who made a failed bid for Congress in 1996. In his
spare time, Shugart is running Al Shugart International, a
three-employee company whose goal is to look for potential
investments and/or startups for Shugart to run. He looks at about
five business plans a week. He has two company names locked up if
he finds something he likes - Shugart Technology Inc. and Al
Shugart Communications. Lest we forget, Shugart is also a "major
investor" in a non-toxic bug spray company called Orange Guard, a
French country cuisine restaurant called Fandango and a charter
plane company run by his wife called Modern Airplane Co. Oh, and
he's also working on two books: an autobiography titled "Turn Left
At Leo's Liquors" and a business book called "You Don't Need Al
Shugart's A to Z Guide to Success In Business and Life - But It
Couldn't Hurt." Shugart's motto: If you want something done, give
it to a busy person."

In Passing

You just gotta love a guy like Shugart. Bones had to call
Shugart's assistant to give her some info, but Big Al picked up
the phone. His assistant wasn't in but he was more than happy to
write down a message for her. A CEO taking a message for his
assistant. When was the last time that happened? "Lotza guyz in
this industry claim they don't have egos, but Al's the real deal,"
grinned Bones.

http://www.varbusiness.com/sections/columns/columns.jhtml?articleId=188
00286

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Many books will be written on the incredible influence the PC has
had on society. Al Shugart's contribution is a very significant part
of this story, and we all have benefited.

Regards,

Mike Monett
 
J

JoeBloe

Jan 1, 1970
0
You are very welcome. Most people don't know the tremendous effect
Al had on the PC computing industry.

That data storage technology had an impact across all industries.

The hard drive drove this country for a while. After we bit it in
the late seventies with Japanese steel being so much cheaper and so
many industries had a rough time here, the computer and electronics
industry held this entire global economy afloat.
 
Top