Tandon Corporation

Not to be confused with Tandy Corporation.

Tandon Corporation was a disk drive and PC manufacturer founded in 1975 (incorporated in 1976 as Tandon Magnetics Corp.)[1] by Sirjang Lal Tandon, known as "Jugi" Tandon, a former mechanical engineer.[2][3] The company originally produced magnetic recording read/write heads for the then-burgeoning floppy-drive market. Due to the labor-intensive nature of the product, production was carried out in India which was the key to the company's competitiveness. In the late 1970s, Tandon developed direct equivalents to Shugart floppy drives, and is credited with the invention of DS/DD (double-sided, double-density) versions[4][5] which became its primary product in the early 1980s.

In 1979, the president of Tandy Corporation ordered 50,000 disk drive units for about $12 million and used them in its first Radio Shack personal computers.[3] Tandon would become the world's largest independent producer of disk drives for personal computers and word processors.[3] In the mid-1980s, Tandon introduced a line of hard disk drives, making several models of the same basic design with a P shaped top cover and a pinion rack stepper motor off to the side. They also introduced portable hard disk drives that could be easily removed from personal computers.[2] As competition from Japanese manufacturers increased, and personal computer sales slipped, Tandon struggled to remain profitable.[2] Tandon sold its original data-storage business to Western Digital for nearly $80 million in 1988,[6] and brought in former IBM and other computer industry executives in an attempt to remake the company as a leading producer of personal computers.[2] By 1989, nearly all (90 percent) of its personal computer sales were in Europe, and its stock price had fallen from a 1983 peak of $34.25 to $0.50.[2]

PCX

Tandon PCX

The PCX computer was made in 1986. It comes normally with 256 KB of RAM, 80 column monitor, 2 x 360 KBs 51⁄4 diskette drives, 1 x 10 MBs hard disk drive, MS-DOS and GW-BASIC.

References

  1. ↑ Company profile, CIO, June 1991
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Apodaca, Patrice (August 22, 1989). "High hopes for a hard disk drive: Tandon pins its bid for a comeback on a device to make its PCs stand out". Los Angeles Times.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Hayes, Thomas C. (July 25, 1983). "Tandon rides computer crest". New York Times.
  4. ↑ "Magnetic recording device for double sided media: Sirjang L. Tandon et al", Patent number: 4151573, Filing date: Jun 13, 1977, Issue date: Apr 24, 1979
  5. ↑ US 4151573, "Magnetic recording device for double sided media: Sirjang L. Tandon et al", issued 1979-04-24
  6. ↑ O'Dell, John (May 24, 1988). "Western digital bought patent problems when it acquired hard disk operation". Los Angeles Times.