FLOPTICAL TECHNOLOGY ASSOCIATION ANNOUNCES INCORPORATION 

"Your Next Floppy Will be a 21 MByte Floptical Disk Driven;
FTA Membership Now Tops Two Dozen Companies;

Cupertino, CA -- June 14, 1993 -- The Floptical Technology Association
(FTA) today announced its incorporation under the laws of the state of
California as a nonprofit mutual benefit corporation. Founded two years
ago to promote 21-megabyte (MB) Floptical technology as the de facto
industry standard for very high-capacity floppy disk drives, the
association now includes over two dozen vendors, manufacturing partners
and licensees of Floptical technology. They are the leading companies in
the floppy disk drive and media market segment, providing drives, media,
host adapters, subsystems and associated products. The technology has been
acclaimed by industry forces (see p. 2), many of whom see it as, "Your
next floppy."

The FTA sponsors a variety of activities and promotions, including trade
show attendance at PC Expo and Comdex/Fall, regular information
dissemination via news releases and a bimonthly newsletter, plus articles
for the trade and business press. User-oriented information available
includes a member/product directory, a "Where to Buy Floptical Products"
directory, plus technology and applications white papers.

"FTA incorporation benefits end users, distributors and current members,"
says FTA chairman James D. Milligan of 3M. "The FTA makes it easier for
users to choose from a wider array of compatible Floptical products;
distributors benefit from increased product awareness and demand, and
members can showcase and demonstrate their integrated products at major
industry trade shows, as well as gain press exposure."

Incorporation also provides for membership growth, the opportunity to
positively affect market acceptance of this new industry standard,
creating the potential for integration of member products, and
capitalizing on business opportunities in this fast-growing market.

The FTA organization is based on an Industry Development Committee (TDC),
chaired by James D. Milligan of 3M. Subcommittees include Membership,
chaired by Steven Wise, Iomega Corp., and Operating Systems, co-chaired by
Marlene Guerrero of Adaptec, and Norm Hayes of Insite Peripherals.

"The 21 MB Floptical disk drive will be your next floppy," says Milligan,
"because it's the first and only very high capacity 3.5-inch flexible
drive able to read and write the over seven billion standard lower
capacity 720KB and 1.44MB 3.5-inch diskettes in use today and also satisfy
the needs of powerful systems users for I/O, backup, software distribution
and near-line storage." Industry researchers augment Milligan's
predictions. Disk/Trend, Inc., Mt. View, CA, forecasts vigorous growth
worldwide for Floptical products to an estimated $208 million by 1994. In
the last two years the FTA has achieved volume drive and media production,
as well as technical supriority, product availability, cost-effectiveness,
major OEM agreements, and most of all, satisfying end-user demand. Future
goals include recruiting major OEMs, software houses and host adapter
companies as members, and providing more operating system support.

Major milestones toward Floptical technology industry standardization
include: 

* Insite Peripherals, Inc., San Jose, and Iomega, Roy, Utah, now produce
Floptical drives in volume for both the OEM and retail markets, through
their manufacturing partners MKE (Matsushita-Kotobuki Electronics
Industries, Ltd.) and Chinon Industries, two of the largest disk drive
suppliers in the world.

* Three manufacturers currently produce and ship quantities of 21MB
Floptical diskettes: Hitachi-Maxell, Iomega and 3M, the world's largest
maker of flexible media.

* Two major computer manufacturers, Silicon Graphics and Hewlett-Packard,
have both standardized on Floptical technology for their next generation
workstations.

* More than two dozen subsystem manufacturers have announced Floptical
products -- triple the number in 1991. These include Iomega, ValueStore,
PLI, Conner Peripherals (Maynard), Rancho Technology, MASS Microsystems
and GrassRoots.

* Virtually every interface supplier in the market -- Adaptec, Rancho
Technology, Future Domain, Corel, Data Technology and others -- has
introduced Floptical technology products.

* Microsoft Corp.'s release of Windows NT includes driver support for
Floptical diskette technology.

* Leading computer product distributors JACO, Ingram Merisel, and Arrow
Electronics distribute and support Floptical diskette technology. In
addition, Insite has announced a worldwide distribution network for
Floptical disk drives.

* The Micro Standards Committee of the Microcomputer Manager's Association
(MMA), nominated 21MB Floptical technology as the industry standard for
floppy disk drives.

* As far back as early 1992, industry watcher Dataquest predicted "the
emergence of the Floptical design as the defacto standard in (very
high-density floppy disk drives)."

* Market researcher MMIS (Magnetic Media Information Services), a
Honolulu-based research firm, predicts that 21MB Floptical technology "has
a good chance of becoming the defacto standard for above 2.88MB diskette
drives and media."

* Affordability: Floptical technology prices place it within reach of the
average PC user. Drives are available under $300, less than one-third the
price per megabyte of standard floppy drives. With street prices of less
than $1/MB, or under $20 per diskette, Floptical media is a bargain. 

* Applications: Floppy drives and media have always been the most flexible
of system peripherals, which explains its long-term viability and
necessity to systems. Floptical technology has expanded floppy usage
beyond traditional I/O to near-line secondary storage and lower-capacity
backup. With the advent of more memory-intensive software applications,
such as multimedia, the demand for higher-capacity flexible disk storage
has risen dramatically. 

FTA members include drive manufacturers Insite Peripherals and Iomega
Corp.; media manufacturers 3M, Maxell and Iomega; Insite's drive
manufacturing partner Matsushita-Kotobuki Electronics Industries, Ltd.
(MKE) and Iomega's drive manufacturing partner, Chinon; subsystem
manufacturer O.R. Computer System PTE. Ltd.; host adapter companies
Adaptec and Rancho Technology; and over a dozen other members providing a
range of supporting Floptical products.

Floptical Technology Association
21710 Stevens Creek Blvd, Suite 220, Cupertino, CA 95014
408-446-0407;  fax: 408-446-0450

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