Shugart Associates
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| Industry | Computer hardware |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1973 |
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Area served
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Worldwide |
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Key people
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Alan Shugart (Founder) |
| Products | Floppy disk drives |
Shugart Associates was a computer peripheral manufacturer that dominated the floppy disk drive market in the late 1970s and is famous for introducing the 5 1⁄4-inch minifloppy floppy disk drive.
Founded in 1973, Shugart Associates was purchased by Xerox in 1977. In the early 1980s the name was changed to Shugart Corporation. Xerox exited the business in 1985 and 1986, selling the brand name and the 8-inch floppy product line to Narlinger Group (in March 1986). Narlinger promptly rebranded itself as Shugart Corporation and continued as such into the early 1990s. Under Narlinger management, Shugart acquired several discontinued product lines such as the Optotech 5984 Write Once Read Many (WORM) drive.
Alan Shugart, after a distinguished career at IBM and a few years at Memorex, decided to strike out on his own, and in 1973 he gathered up some venture capital and started Shugart Associates. The original business plan was to build a small-business system (similar to the IBM 3740) including the development of all of the major components, including floppy disk drives, a printer, etc. After two years the seed money was gone and Shugart had no product to show for it. The Board wanted to focus on the floppy disk drive but Shugart wanted to continue the original plan. Official company documents state that Shugart quit, but he tells the story another way, that he was fired by the venture capitalists. Shugart went on with Finis Conner to found Shugart Technology in 1979, whose name was changed to Seagate Technology in response to a legal challenge by Xerox.
The 5 1⁄4-inch disk drive was introduced by Shugart in September 1976 as the Shugart SA-400 Minifloppy (Shugart's trademarked brand name) at an OEM price of $390 for the drive and $45 for ten diskettes. The SA-400 and related models became their best selling products, with shipments of up to 4000 drives per day.
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