Simon/Public Relations, Inc.

SYQUEST TECHNOLOGYBACKGROUND INFORMATION
November 1983

PRESS CONTACTS:
Janelle Jefferds
SyQuest Technology
47923 Warm Springs Blvd.
Fremont, CA 94538(415) 490-7511
Susan Ker:r:
Simon/Public Relations, Inc.
1230 Oakmead Parkway, #318
Sunnyvale, CA 94086(408) 746-0911

Oakmead Terrace, 1230 Oakmead Parkway Suite 318, Sunnyvale, CA 94086 (408) 746·0911

Brentwood Square, 11661 San Vicente Suite 903, Los Angeles, 90049 (213) 820·2606

SYQUEST TECHNOLOGYFACT SHEET
47923 Warm Springs Blvd.
Fremont, CA 94538(415) 490-7511

Date of founding:January 27, 1982

Date of first shipment:

August 8, 1982

Ownership:

Privately held

Facilities:

66,000 square feet in Fremont,
California

Number of employees:

190

Products:

The industry's first 3.9-inch
Winchester disc drives:
the SQ306R (removable) andSQ306F (fixed) 6.38-megabyte;
the SQ3l2F l2.75-megabyte;
the SQ325F 25.5-megabyte;
and the SQ338F 38.2-megabyte
lines

Marketing channels:

Direct sales, manufacturers
representatives throughout
North America, Europe,
Scandinavia, South Africa,
Israel, Australia, New Zealand,Brazil, Argentina, Japan andthe Far East.

Markets:

Original Equipment Manufacturers(OEMs) of intelligent computer
systems

Executive Staff:

Syed Iftikar, President andChairman of the Board
Ben Alaimo, Vice President,
Electrical Engineering
George Hennen, Vice President,
Finance
Richard Maslana, Vice President,
Operations
Larry Sarisky, Vice President,
Marketing and Sales
Anil Nigam, Director,
Mechanical Engineering

MORE

PAGE TWOCOMPANY OVERVIEW

SyQuest Technology was formed in 1982 to engineer new
methods of meeting the mass storage requirements of small
computer systems.

The result of these efforts -- the computerindustry's first 3.9-inch (lOa-millimeter)
Winchester disc drives

removable

offer five to ten times the storage

capacity of comparable minifloppies in half the space.
Headed by founder and President Syed Iftikar, who had
previously co-founded and served as vice president of Seagate
Technology, SyQuest's management team offers a wide range ofexperience in the disc drive and electronics industry.
The SQ306, SQ312, SQ325 and SQ338 lines of disc drives are
sold worldwide to OEM companies through a comprehensive
network of sales representatives and international
distributors.

Applications for SyQuest drives include

portable computers, small-scale workstations, personal
computers, word processors, and other intelligent computer
systems requiring economical high-capacity removable datastorage.

MORE

PAGE THREE

PRODUCTS
SyQuest Technology offers five models of disc drives:

theSQ306R (removable media version), the SQ306F (fixed mediaversion), the SQ312F, the SQ325F and the SQ338F.
SyQuest drives incorporate the industry's first 3.9-inch
Winchester disc drive design.

By utilizing the Winchester

rigid disc technology, the drives offer higher performance andgreater storage capacity than floppy discs.
A small physical size (8 by 4.8 by 1.625 inches) allows
SyQuest drives to be used in applications where, in the past,
size typically prohibited the use of Winchester storage suchas portable or home computers.
To provide high performance in a small size, SyQuest
designed its ChromaFlux™

overcoating to prevent media

contamination and allow dense packing of data.

This graphite

coated metallic layering also eliminates head crashes andcartridge purge cycles.
In addition, any SyQuest drive can utilize existing
5-1/4-inch Winchester controller interfaces withoutmodification.
The SQ306 drives, SyQuest's original product line, offer
five to ten times the storage capacity -- 6.28 megabytes
unformatted, 5 megabytes formatted -- of the industry standard
5-1/4-inch minifloppy.

MORE

PAGE FOUR

Although Winchester discs are typically fixed, SyQuest's
SQ306R discs are small, pocket-sized cartridges which can bereplaced when full and interchanged between drives.

They

combine the convenience of floppies with the performance andreliability of Winchester discs.
SQ306 design features include an embedded digital servo
DigiLok™

-- that guarantees full media interchangeability

between all SQ306 drives and permits typical access times of
85 milliseconds and data-transfer rates of 5 Mbits persecond.
The SQ312F and SQ325F fixed media drives,

introduced in

May 1983, and the SQ338F fixed media drive, announced in
November 1983, are designed for applications requiring a small
physical size with high-capacity data storage.
The SQ312F offers 12.75-megabyte unformatted andlO-megabyte formatted storage capacity.

The SQ325F provides

25.5-megabyte unformatted and 20-megabyte formatted storage.
The SQ338F offers 38.2-megabyte unformatted and 30-megabyte
formatted storage capacity.

The three platter SQ338F, likethe two-platter SQ325F and single-platter SQ312F features adata-transfer rate of 5 Mbits per second and average accesstimes of 85 milliseconds.

MORE

PAGE FIVEEXECUTIVE STAFF
Syed Iftikar, President and Chairman of the Board.
Prior to founding SyQuest Technology, Mr. Iftikar was aco-founder and vice president, mechanical engineering ofSeagate Technology.
He previously spent more than nine years
with Memorex Corporation in numerous engineering andmanagement positions.
Holder of four patents, Mr. Iftikar
received an MSEE degree from the University of Santa Clara, anMSME from the University of California, Berkeley, and a BSME
from the University of Madras, India.
Ben Alaimo, Vice President, Electrical Engineering.
Before joining SyQuest in 1982, Mr. Alaimo was manager ofdrive systems for Memorex Corporation, and held various
positions with DataDisk, Pertec and 3M.
Mr. Alaimo has been
awarded patents for his design of a reel servo and datatransfer system.
George Hennen, Vice President, Finance.
Mr. Hennen previously served as corporate controller for KLA
Instruments.
A Certified Public Accountant, his experience
also includes eight years with Price Waterhouse.
Mr. Hennen
joined SYQuest in June 1982.
Richard Maslana, Vice President, Operations.
Before joining SyQuest in October 1983, Mr. Maslana was vicepresident, operations for Atari Corporation.
Prior to that,he held positions with Centronics Data Computer Corporation,
Xerox Corporation's Diablo Systems Division, and Memorex
Corporation.
Larry Sarisky, Vice President, Marketing and Sales.
Formerly co-founder and vice president, sales and marketing of
Data Technology Corporation, Mr. Sarisky joined SyQuest in1982.
His more than 10 years' experience in the disc drive
industry includes sales and marketing positions with Memorex
Corporation, Ampex, and Data 100 Corporation.
Anil Nigam, Director, Mechanical Engineering.
Prior to joining SyQuest in March 1982, Mr. Nigam was managerof the Recording Technology Center at Memorex Corporation for
more than eight years.
He previously held various engineering
positions with FMC Corporation's Ordinance Engineering
Division.

# # #