Advanced Technology and Systems (ADTX), building on its success in Japan, has opened a U.S. office to introduce their storage products to the rest of the world. They’re showing some of their products at this week’s Macworld New York, though in technology previews only; they’re not exhibiting on the show floor.
ADTX was founded in 1993 as an associated engineering company of IBM Japan to provide complete storage solutions. Because the development and manufacturing of leading-edge technology has produced growing demand for their superior storage solutions, the company now employs almost 200 people and generated year 2000 revenues of close to US$100 million.
In an effort to continue the commitment to the Mac community, ADTX U.S. acquired many of its regional managers from MicroNet Technology, a well-known manufacturer of storage for the Apple platform, Naresh Chadha, VP of the U.S. and Europe operations for ADTX, told MacCentral. Long time video maker Ampex shut down MicroNet in February, citing mounting losses. MicroNet was a long-time provider of Mac-compatible storage systems. Fantom Drives, a division of BNL Technologies acquired MicroNet’s assets, patents and copyrights.
“When MicroNet closed in February, we realized there was an opportunity to bring on board a knowledgeable team of Mac storage experts,” Chadha said. “We are dedicated to bringing high performance, proven reliability and aggressive prices to the Mac operating system.”
The current Macintosh storage products include a line of RAID systems, mirrored drives, the FireWire Direct Recording Disk (DRD) and several products that are strictly for the OEM market. All these products use patented ADTX technologies to provide solutions for various storage needs, Chadha said.
In the near future, ADTX will be announcing details on its up coming Fibre Channel and Network Attached Storage (NAS) lines for the Mac operating system. ADTX doesn’t sell directly to consumers and prices are set competitively to allow for a very “cost-effective solution,” according to Ken Vitto, regional sales manager.
One of the company’s most eye-company’s products is the DV MasStor, a portable DV hard disk recorder that has two FireWire ports using a replaceable hard disk drive (HDD) pack. The DV MasStor connects to DV devices such as a DV camera and a DV VCR and can directly record digital video without the need for a computer. The DV MasStor uses a HDD pack and can start recording anytime unlike a videocassette recorder,which must rewind or forward a tape to search where to record. The DV MasStor can automatically record on its empty area.
When playing back recorded scenes, the DV MasStor searches for them randomly at high-speed, which is impossible using tape media and find the selected scene immediately. During playback, there’s no search noise like with analog tape media or block noise like with digital tape media. However, the DV MasStor maintains VCR-like features such as forward, rewind, pause, and incremental forward stepping.
The DV MasStor HDD pack format allows storage media replacement. A lineup of 20 to 140-minute HDD packs is planned. The hard disk recorder has a detachable battery and optional carrying case.
The DV MasStor supports AV/C (Audio Video Control) protocol, which enables the DV MasStor to be controlled by a FireWire-equipped computer. It helps get digital video directly from the DV MasStor into such a system or from the computer to DV MasStor using DV nonlinear editing software.
Several of ADTX’s products are compatible with Mac OS X, and that compatibility continues to expand as the company updates its product line, Vitto said.