Tallgrass Technologies Corporation was an American computer hardware company that was the first to offer a hard disk drive product for the IBM PC in 1981.
[1]: 179 [2]: 262 Tallgrass was a Kansas City based microcomputer hardware and software company founded in December 1980 by David M. Allen.
The hard disk drive product was initially sold in Computerland stores, alongside the original IBM PC.
The IBM name attracted the makers of larger, professional software products that required a hard-drive's speed and capacity.
The early availability of the Tallgrass hard-drives enabled those software products to make earlier entrances into the PC market.
Tallgrass' initial revenue stream in 1981 was provided by a contract with SofTech Microsystems for development of the 68000 interpreter for the UCSD Pascal software system.
Allen needed to develop an interface-card and a device-driver to give the PC a connection to and access to the Tallgrass subsystem.
Tallgrass was able to supply its hard disk subsystems for the PC, in production quantities in November 1981,[1]: 179 [8]: 122 [9] almost immediately after IBM started revenue shipments of PCs, in October.
Volk assembled a sales organization and started an advertising campaign, initially incorporating pictures of macaws that he and his wife raised in their home.
To finance Volk's plan to revive sales growth with an enlarged marketing push, Allen accepted the overtures of venture capital.
In mid-1986, Gateway Associates L.P. in St. Louis took the lead and brought in the major investor, Reimer and Koger Assoc., pension fund advisor for KPERS (the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System.)