Lawrence Welk, the bandleader who entertained millions of Americans over a generation of broadcasting his TV show, once received a patent: for a music-themed design of an ashtray.
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| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 5847896 | Disk drive including sloped base and cover A low height disk drive having an overall height of approximately one inch (1"). The drive includes a head disk assembly, including a base plate, a disk rotatably supported on the base plate, a motor for rotating the disk, at least one head for reading in... | 12/08/1998 |
| 5814196 | Apparatus and method for high throughput sputtering An apparatus in accordance with the present invention provides a single or multi-layer coating to the surface of a plurality of substrates. The apparatus may include a plurality of buffer and sputtering chambers, and an input end and an output end, wherei... | 09/29/1998 |
| 5750270 | Multi-layer magnetic recording media The present invention relates to improved multi-layer magnetic recording media and magnetoresistive drive systems incorporating the same. In particular, multi-layer media including alternating layers of cobalt or cobalt alloys and a precious metal, such a... | 05/12/1998 |
| 5683561 | Apparatus and method for high throughput sputtering An apparatus in accordance with the present invention provides a single or multi-layer coating to the surface of a plurality of substrates. The apparatus may include a plurality of buffer and sputtering chambers, and an input end and an output end, wherei... | 11/04/1997 |
| 5677808 | System and method for controlling a seek operation in a disk drive A disk drive, comprising a storage medium having data tracks for storing data, a spindle motor mounting the storage medium for rotation, an interactive element for reading information from and writing information on the data tracks of the storage medium a... | 10/14/1997 |
| 5621582 | Disk drive including a baseplate well for the spin motor A low height disk drive having an overall height of approximately one inch (1"). The drive includes a head disk assembly, including a base plate, two disks rotatably supported on the base plate, a motor for rotating the disks, at least two heads for readi... | 04/15/1997 |
| 5617269 | System for recording track-centering servo signals on multi-track magnetic medium A multi-track servo recording head includes a multi-tip write core for simultaneously writing a plurality of tracking signals on magnetic storage media. The magnetic recording head may include an optical edge sensor and a magnetic edge sensor for sensing ... | 04/01/1997 |
| 5612838 | Oxidation-stabilized hydrocarbon liquid bearings for lubricated disk drives In liquid disk drives, liquid bearing materials based on hydrocarbon liquids, halogenated liquids and mixtures thereof are used at the head-disk interface. Additives such as antioxidants and boundary layer lubricants may be incorporated to enhance oxidati... | 03/18/1997 |
| 5610808 | Hard disk drive controller employing a plurality of microprocessors A controller in a hard disk drive system for controlling the transfer of data and control signals between a plurality of host processors and the disk drive system. The disk drive system including storage media, at least one transducer for recording data o... | 03/11/1997 |
| 5608583 | System for qualifying the detection of a servo dibit A circuit is described to detect and qualify a dibit signal, wherein the dibit signal includes a first peak amplitude followed by a second peak amplitude. The circuit includes a first qualification circuit that receives the signal and operates to detect a... | 03/04/1997 |
| 5600506 | Apparatus and method for determining the position of a transducer relative to a disk surface in a disk drive system A method and system for generating a position signal indicative of the position of a transducer with reference to a fixed reference point on the surface of a disk within a disk drive system. The system is comprised of two major elements. The first element... | 02/04/1997 |
| 5594595 | FM detection of slider-disk interface A method for testing slider/disk contact in a disk drive is described. The disk drive comprises a rotating disk and a head mounted by an actuator for selective positioning of the head over the disk, the head having a slider, and a flexure for attaching th... | 01/14/1997 |
| 5586250 | SCSI-coupled module for monitoring and controlling SCSI-coupled raid bank and bank environment An intelligent status monitoring, reporting and control module is coupled to a SCSI bus that interconnects a cluster of SCSI-compatible data storage modules (e.g., magnetic disk drives). The status monitoring, reporting and control module is otherwise cou... | 12/17/1996 |
| 5585978 | Arcuate scan tape drive An arcuate scan tape drive for transferring data to and from a data tape, including a base with four side walls and a cover, which base and cover together have a 31/2 inch form factor. Situated within the base and cover is a head carrier assembly for reco... | 12/17/1996 |
| 5585974 | Disk drive with PRML read channel calibration using a noise generator A read channel is described for use in a storage device including a storage medium for storing data, an interactive element for reading information from and writing information on the storage medium and a processor for performing control functions in the ... | 12/17/1996 |
| 5581458 | Bufered intelligent digital tape controller with onboard ECC and featuring global control variables A buffered computer data storage tape controller having a microprocessor, a buffer memory, a host interface, an error correction circuit, and a tape drive interface. A host interface control program executed by the microprocessor controls the host interfa... | 12/03/1996 |
| 5570244 | Method and apparatus for controlling assertion of a write inhibit signal using separate threshold values for each of a plurality of recording surfaces A method for controlling assertion of a write inhibit signal in a disk drive is described. The disk drive comprises at least one rotating disk having data recording surfaces, and a head for each recording surface. Each head is mounted by an actuator for s... | 10/29/1996 |
| 5570241 | Single channel, multiple head servo writing with embedded head identification A write drive logic circuit is described. The write driver logic circuit comprises a set of write drivers, with each one of the set of write drivers having an input and an output, such that each write driver is responsive to an input signal applied to the... | 10/29/1996 |
| 5566347 | Multiple interface driver circuit for a peripheral storage device A multiple interface driver circuit for transmitting data in a channel according to one of several different signal protocols. In the exemplary embodiment, two separate bus driver circuits are connected to a common output terminal and may be selected unde... | 10/15/1996 |
| 5561823 | Monitor system for determining the available capacity of a READ buffer and a WRITE buffer in a disk drive system A data buffer monitor apparatus which monitors the space availability in WRITE buffer and the number of sectors available for transfer in the READ buffer and generates the OK TO TRANSFER signal. The data buffers monitor apparatus includes a READ buffer mo... | 10/01/1996 |
| 5545989 | Non-destructive in-situ landing velocity determination of magnetic rigid disk drives using back EMF from the spindle motor during shutdown A method is described for testing for slider/disk contact in a disk drive comprising a rotating disk and a head mounted by an actuator for selective positioning of the head over the disk, the head having a slider, and a spindle motor for rotating the disk... | 08/13/1996 |
| 5537270 | Disk drive apparatus The present invention provides a disk drive apparatus for use in computer systems and especially in computer systems where size and weight are of paramount concern, such as lap top computer systems. The preferred embodiment of the disk drive apparatus inc... | 07/16/1996 |
| 5532889 | Winchester drive card including an actuator arm body, actuator arm plates, and a VCM magnet external to a controlled environment A hard disk drive implemented as a plug-in module has a height of 10 mm and a foot print of 85.6 mm×54 mm. The footprint corresponds to the dimensions of memory cards. The disk drive uses a modified suspension in which the load beams are welded to actuat... | 07/02/1996 |
| 5532886 | Data stream smoothing method and circuit for a tape drive A data smoother for a streaming cartridge tape drive including a data separator circuit for generating a clock signal and a second phase-locked loop circuit for removing frequency modulation arising from instantaneous speed variation (ISV) errors. The bro... | 07/02/1996 |
| 5530600 | Signal processing system including adaptive read equalizer with shut off mode for disk drives A microcontroller managed adaptive control system, including a precompensator and a passive equalizer, is provided to decrease the read error rate of a disk drive. An adaptively controllable programmable precompensator adjusts the timing of data bits bein... | 06/25/1996 |
| 5526204 | Low drag liquid bearing recording head A read/write head for an information recording apparatus having a liquid bearing lubricant between a rotating storage medium and the read/write head is disclosed. The head is provided an actuator to position the read/write head over the rotating storage m... | 06/11/1996 |
| 5523901 | System for correcting transducer tangential skew in a disk drive system having two actuators In a disk drive system having two actuators, each said actuator having a plurality of transducers, said system employing a transducer switching procedure for switching between a first presently selected transducer and a second to be selected transducer, a... | 06/04/1996 |
| 5523539 | Process for manufacturing recording heads for magnetic storage devices A method for improving the manufacture of an arcuate scan drive. Such drives include a plurality of read/write heads, each head having a gap and being mounted to a rotating drum. The method for manufacture includes: rotating the drum to determine the rota... | 06/04/1996 |
| 5521768 | Low-power hard disk drive system architecture A hard disk drive system operates from a limited power source to provide for the storage of data on the surface of a rotating hard disk media. An embedded controller incorporates a data channel for transferring data with respect to a hard disk media. The ... | 05/28/1996 |
| 5517376 | Uniform load distribution duel member disk clamp A disk drive including a disk clamp for clamping one or more disks within the disk drive. The clamp is comprised of a dual member construction which provides a substantially uniform contact pressure at the circular line of contact between the clamp and th... | 05/14/1996 |
| 5506958 | Error detection for parallel data transfer between a processor and a peripheral device by comparing regisgers storing a sum of values in bytes of data transferred A method and apparatus for performing error detection on data transfer through a parallel interface port at a substantially increased data transfer rate with a minimum of handshaking. Blocks of data are transferred between a sending device and a receiving... | 04/09/1996 |
| 5504790 | Digital data phase detector A digital phase detector that stores four sequential digital samples in a shift register. The contents of the shift register is evaluated at one half the clock frequency which generated the digital samples. The digital phase detectors predicts what the va... | 04/02/1996 |
| 5499232 | Track format and record carrier system for split data field support The invention provides a track format and a record carrier system for supporting a track architecture where a first field, such as a data field, is split by a second field, like a servo field. The preferred track format includes a split count field that c... | 03/12/1996 |
| 5497085 | Method for determining an outer diameter rolloff in a process for making magnetic disks A method is shown for testing a magnetic disk to be used in a disk drive. The method includes the steps of measuring a height profile of an outer radial edge of the disk, using the profile to determine a slope value for each of a pair of radial segments o... | 03/05/1996 |
| 5495607 | Network management system having virtual catalog overview of files distributively stored across network domain A network management system includes a domain administrating server (DAS) that stores a virtual catalog representing an overview of all files distributively stored across a network domain currently or in the past. The current and historical file informati... | 02/27/1996 |
| 5491812 | System and method for ethernet to SCSI conversion A method and apparatus for interfacing a SCSI device directly to an Ethernet network utilizes a single board converter for translating information packets in Ethernet format to a SCSI format. In reverse, the same converter translates information from a SC... | 02/13/1996 |
| 5491808 | Method for tracking memory allocation in network file server A method for dynamically tracking memory resource allocations/deallocations of a program resident in the memory of a network file server is disclosed wherein calls to system memory allocation functions are intercepted and diverted to memory resident track... | 02/13/1996 |
| 5491595 | Magnetic head guidance and calibration system and method description Disclosed is a method and apparatus for guidance of a magnetic head to a predetermined reference position generally used to recalibrate head to media orientation. An electro-magnetic or photosensitive device is provided to accurately and repeatably positi... | 02/13/1996 |
| 5490024 | Disk clamp having an annular section of increased rigidity A disk drive having a read/write head flying at extremely low flying heights, the drive including a disk clamp for clamping one or more disks within the disk drive, with the clamp exerting a substantially uniform pressure at the circular line of contact b... | 02/06/1996 |
| 5488521 | Information recording apparatus with a non-newtonian liquid bearing An information storage apparatus is disclosed for reading and/or writing information on a rigid disk, which includes a non-Newtonian liquid bearing interface between a transducer and a storage medium, instead of a conventional air or Newtonian liquid bear... | 01/30/1996 |