Dick Oswald

Abstract

In outline form this presentation covers three areas:

1) A historical perspective and time line for some significant disk drive products

2) Evolution of major system components

3) Status and description of current servo track writers and disk drive production procedures

In particular, the objective is to provide some insight into the overall disk drive system rather than just recording heads and storage media.

Biography

Dick Oswald has a Ph.D.in electrical engineering from University of California, Berkeley and has specialties of control systems, magnetics for actuators and sensors, design of analog/digital mixed signal integrated circuits, and patent/intellectual property analysis primarily for electronic hardware. He was responsible for disk drive positioning system design and implementation for several IBM storage products from the mid 1960’s through the 1970’s. From 1980 through 2000 as an independent technologist, he taught many seminars and graduate level short courses on disk drives and computer peripheral technology and continues to participate in the design and implementation of mixed signal integrated circuits and disk drive servo track writers.