Diablo Data Systems was a division of

Xerox Xerox Holdings Corporation (; also known simply as Xerox) is an American corporation that sells print and electronic document, digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut (ha ...

created by the acquisition of Diablo Systems Inc. for US$29 million in 1972,Xerox Factbook 2003-2004
, p.43 a company which had been founded in 1969 by George E. Comstock, Charles L. Waggoner and others. The company was best known for the HyType I and HyType II typewriter-based

computer terminal A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that can be used for entering data into, and transcribing data from, a computer or a computing system. The teletype was an example of an early-day hard-copy terminal and ...

s, the

Diablo 630 The Diablo 630 is a discontinued daisy wheel style computer printer sold by the Diablo Data Systems division of the Xerox Corporation beginning in 1980. The printer is capable of letter-quality printing; that is, its print quality is equivalent ...

daisywheel printers, as well as removable hard disk drives that were used in the

Xerox Alto The Xerox Alto is a computer designed from its inception to support an operating system based on a graphical user interface (GUI), later using the desktop metaphor. The first machines were introduced on 1 March 1973, a decade before mass-market G ...

computer and resold by DEC as the

RK02 Digital Equipment Corporation's RK05 is a disk drive whose removable disk pack can hold about 2.5 megabytes of data. Introduced 1972, it is similar to IBM's 1964-introduced 2310, and uses a disk pack similar to IBM's 2315 disk pack, although ...

and

RK03 Digital Equipment Corporation's RK05 is a disk drive whose removable disk pack can hold about 2.5 megabytes of data. Introduced 1972, it is similar to IBM's 1964-introduced 2310, and uses a disk pack similar to IBM's 2315 disk pack, althoug ...

Overview

The ''RK02'' and ''RK03'' drives that ''Diablo'' made for

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president unt ...

(DEC) was described by DEC as "stores digital data in serial format on IBM 2315 type disk cartridges." It differed from what DEC later manufacturered for itself, rather than ''rebadging'' as "the RK04 and RK05 use voice coil head positioning, and the RK02 and RK03 use rack and pinion head positioning." The RK02/RK04 were ''low density'' and stored 600K 16-bit words, whereas the RK03/RK05 store 1.2 megabytes of 16-bit words. By using "12 sectors of 128 words (low density) or 256 words (high density)" and "203 cylinders of 2 tracks per cylinder" that was 1.22 megabytes or 2.45 megabytes respectively. ''Diablo'' also made full computer systems as well as printers.

Diablo systems

The ''Xerox Diablo 3100'' was among the complete computing systems sold by ''Diablo''.

Diablo printers

Among the models for which ''Diablo'' was known were the ''9R87201'', the ''HyType I'' (1973) and the ''HyType II''. Some of the printwheels were plastic, others were "metalized." Also included were the

and 635.

Overview

Diablo systems

Diablo printers

References

Further reading