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Exabyte Announces Industry's
First LVD SCSI Tape Drive

BOULDER, Colo., March 8, 1999 - Exabyte Corp. (Nasdaq: EXBT) today announced that its award-winning Mammoth tape drive has begun shipping with an optional low voltage differential (LVD) SCSI interface. LVD is the newest physical interface in today's SCSI landscape. LVD provides many of the benefits normally associated with high voltage differential, such as greater signal integrity, increased distances and more devices per bus, while eliminating the related power and voltage issues.

In addition, LVD SCSI's multi-mode capabilities provide improved functionality. This multi-mode capability makes LVD fully backward compatible with single-ended SCSI and consequently, a direct replacement for the older single-ended technology.

"Mammoth drives with LVD will have the capability for multi-mode operation. The drive will operate in either single-ended or LVD mode through a unique autosensing capability," said Ken Cruden, director of storage media at Exabyte. "The drive will automatically sense the type of bus it is attached to, either single-ended or LVD, and make the appropriate connection."

LVD gives users several advantages over single-ended:

• Provides up to 25 meters in distance, compared to only six meters with single-ended
• Attaches up to 16 devices, compared to only eight devices with single-ended
• Provides greater signal integrity for faster and more reliable data transfers
• Compatible with Ultra2 devices

"Mammoth drives with LVD SCSI will be the only tape drives on the market that won't degrade the performance of Ultra2 disk drives on the same bus," said Chris Ilg, senior product manager at Exabyte.

Currently shipping, Mammoth drives with LVD SCSI have an MSRP of $3750. Fully kitted, (with media, cleaning cartridge, cables, etc.), the same drive will retail for $3,965.

Exabyte Editorial Contact
Contact: Heather Branan
Exabyte Corp.
303-417-7038 303-786-7000
heatherb@exabyte.com

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