Parent Firms to Dissolve Disk Media Joint Venture

Disk Media, a Westlake Village computer parts company, is being dissolved by its corporate parents, putting nearly 200 people out of work.

The company’s operations will be phased out “over the next couple of months,” spokeswoman Jeri Eaton Flinn of Memorex Corp. said Tuesday. Memorex formed Disk Media as a joint venture with Control Data in December, 1981.

Flinn said Disk Media makes components for hard disk drives, devices that store information in some kinds of computers.

The joint venture is being dissolved because Minneapolis-based Control Data has pulled out of the market for IBM-compatible hard disk drives and will satisfy its future need for drives at a facility in Omaha, she said. She also said Memorex, a unit of Burroughs, would consolidate its disk-making operations in Santa Clara, Calif., where the company is based.

Flinn denied that the move had anything to do with the slump in the computer industry and the accompanying weak demand for disk drives.

No financial details of the plant closing and corporate dissolution were disclosed.

Memorex and Control Data also said they agreed in principle that Magnetic Peripherals, a company owned mainly by Control Data, will buy Memorex’s share of Peripheral Component in Minneapolis, a second joint venture.