ComByte’s collapse traced to tardiness in reaching market

FORT COLLINS — Trade publications across the nation called ComByte Inc.’s internal tape drive for personal computers one of the most innovative products of 1995, on par with the hugely popular Iomega Zip Drive.

But by the time 1996 rolled around, the Windows-compatible Doubleplay drive, which allowed PC users to install a quarter-inch tape cartridge drive in their computers without sacrificing a floppy disk port, was six months late to market and by then, was not keeping pace with its memory capacity.

“We had started to market the product in February of 1994, and I believe, at that point in time,…