Tallgrass Technologies

rdf:langString Tallgrass Technologies

rdf:langString Tallgrass Technologies Corporation was the first manufacturer to offer a hard disk drive product for the IBM PC. Tallgrass was a Kansas City based microcomputer hardware and software company founded in December 1980 by David M. Allen. The hard disk drive product was initially sold in Computerland stores, alongside the original IBM PC. Tallgrass added tape-backup systems to its product line in 1982. Tallgrass was significant in the history of the PC because IBM shipped its PCs for almost two years without any hard-drive option. The IBM name attracted the makers of larger, professional software products that required a hard-drive's speed and capacity. The early availability of the Tallgrass hard-drives enabled those software products to make earlier entrances into the PC market. The parallel introductions, of the IBM PC with the Tallgrass hard-drive, catalyzed the growth of the PC market compared to what it would have been without the hard-drive option. Tallgrass was one of Seagate's earliest customers, initially purchasing ST-506 drives from Shugart Technology before the name changed to Seagate. The Tallgrass product was designed around the ST-506 hard drive, which required a separate controller between the drive and the computer (unlike hard drives today.) Tallgrass also briefly bought ST-506 drives from Seagate's licensee, Texas Instruments. Later, Tallgrass bought most of its drives from Miniscribe and for a while was Miniscribe's largest customer.