SyQuest Technology was founded in Fremont, California, on 27 January 1982, and its first product was a 5 MB cartridge drive: a rigid hard-disk platter in a removable shell. Iomega’s Bernoulli Box, which used flexible media, shipped the same year, and the two firms spent the next sixteen years selling removable disks against each other. SyQuest’s 44 MB and 88 MB 5.25-inch cartridges became the de facto standard in the Macintosh world. A design studio or print shop sent its work to the service bureau on a SyQuest cartridge.
Iomega’s Zip drive, introduced in 1994, undercut it on price. SyQuest answered with the EZ135, EZFlyer, SyJet and SparQ, but its desktop-publishing customers had started sending files by FTP and writing them to recordable CDs. SyQuest laid off half its staff in August 1998 and filed for Chapter 11 protection that November. Iomega bought its intellectual property, US inventory and fixed assets for $9.5 million; the sale closed in spring 1999 and ended the patent and trademark suits between the two firms. Iomega took no responsibility for drives already sold, and nothing in the filings or the press coverage shows it kept making SyQuest drives or cartridges. Its own Zip and Jaz carried on. The cartridge the Macintosh world had standardised on did not.
Worth remembering
- SyQuest's first product, a 5 MB cartridge drive, came out in 1982, the same year Iomega shipped its Bernoulli Box.
- The 44 MB and 88 MB cartridges became the de facto Macintosh standard for design and prepress work: a studio sent its files to the service bureau on a SyQuest.
- SyQuest's last products, the EZ135, EZFlyer, SyJet (1.5 GB) and SparQ (1 GB), were aimed at the Zip and Jaz and arrived after its customers had started moving to CD-R.
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- SyQuest was founded 27 January 1982 in Fremont, California, by Syed Iftikar, Ben Alaimo, Bill Krajewski, Anil Nigam and George Toldi Wikipedia
- SyQuest's 44 MB and 88 MB 5.25-inch cartridges became the de facto standard for storage and backup in the Macintosh world, particularly for creative professionals Wikipedia
- SyQuest's later products (EZ135, EZFlyer, SyJet, SparQ) competed with Iomega; CD-R media and FTP undermined its desktop-publishing customers; the company laid off half its staff in August 1998 and filed for bankruptcy that year Wikipedia
- Iomega agreed on 13 January 1999 to buy SyQuest's intellectual property, fixed assets and inventory for $9.5 million after SyQuest's November 1998 Chapter 11 filing; Iomega assumed no responsibility for SyQuest products already shipped EE Times
- Iomega's U.S. purchase of SyQuest's intellectual property, inventory and fixed assets closed on 6 April 1999; the two companies released each other from pending patent and trademark suits in Delaware and France SEC (Iomega Form 10-Q, FY1999)
- Iomega's Bernoulli Box, first shipped in 1982 (10 MB), used flexible media pulled toward the head by the spinning disk; Iomega's later Zip, Jaz and Rev drives dropped the Bernoulli design Wikipedia
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