Western Digital Takes a Step Toward Developing IBM Clone

Western Digital has teamed up with a Massachusetts company to develop a key computer software product that would duplicate functions of IBM’s new line of personal computers.

The agreement follows the Irvine-based company’s announcement in October that it had developed a set of computer chips to mimic the operations of IBM’s so-called Micro Channel, a communications pathway inside IBM’s new Personal System/2 line.

The two developments mean Western Digital could become the first company to develop the necessary components to “clone” an entire IBM machine. The computer industry has been scurrying to develop products that will enable companies to produce clones--or competitively priced copies--of the IBM equipment.

John C. Dean, a technology analyst with Montgomery Securities in San Francisco, said the agreement should alleviate some of the fears of would-be clone makers concerned about legal challenges from IBM. The computer giant has a reputation for vigorously defending its patents and trade secrets.

Dean said Western Digital and its new partner, Phoenix Technologies of Norwood, Mass., would appear to have the technical expertise required to develop legal copies of the software that helps manage the flow of information inside the PS/2 machines.

“The agreement should reduce some of the fear in the marketplace,” said Dean, who predicted the first PS/2 clones could reach the market as early as mid-1988.

“Everybody has been working on the hardware, and many have been working on the software (to copy the IBM machines),” he said. “Western Digital has been very aggressively working on it. The combination of Phoenix and Western says to me that they are the heir apparents to the PS/2 marketplace.”

Under the agreement, Western Digital and Phoenix will jointly develop software for the PS/2 line known as BIOS, or basic input/output systems. The BIOS acts as a kind of gatekeeper between a computer’s hardware and other software programs.