Maxtor Serial-ATA drives cause semaphore flags to fly

AGED READERS of the INQUIRER may recall that earlier this year resellers and system integrators were engaged in practising their semaphore signals in the general direction of the INQUIRER semaphore station.

Although semaphore has somewhat slipped into desuetude, when system integrators signal signs like this, this is the letter "U", signifying that the resellers are "up in arms".

We note that on the 14th of April Maxtor told us that its S-ATA drives are compatible with Intel's 875P, and it also says in the same press release that it began shipping such creatures to "selected OEMs" last December.

But as far as we can tell, such Maxtor Serial ATA drives are still a bit hard to find.

This page here lets you select products but we still can't find Serial ATA drives from Maxtor.

Will they arrive before Serial ATA II drives start appearing, we wonder.

But seriously, if you're from Maxtor, a Maxtor distributor, or you know where to buy Maxtor S-ATA drives, kindly drop me a line so that the little semaphore stick person pictured above can drop his weary arms, at last. µ

* A READER SAYS they're "kinda'available from Komplett UK. He adds the "kinda" because one of the drives has the word "unconfirmed 30 May" next to it.

** AND here's another sighting.

*** IT'S A third sighting.

**** A NORTH American reseller was told when he asked about availability of the DiamondMax Plus 9 S-ATA 160GB drives that they won't arrive until August.

See Also
Maxtor messes up on S-ATA, ATA drives
Maxtor readies Serial ATA drives
Serial ATA set to swallow parallel market
Serial ATA II spec announced
Serial ATA solutions lag expectations
Seagate leads in drive to Serial ATA storage