Archive Corp.

Archive Corp. of Costa Mesa said Friday that earnings for the first quarter of its 1985 fiscal year totaled $55,000, a fivefold increase from the $11,000 in first-quarter profits reported a year ago.

But as the computer data storage system manufacturer reported earlier this week, the initial 1985 earnings for the quarter ended Jan. 4 plunged sharply from the $687,000 in profits posted for the final quarter of 1984.

Archive officials have blamed the quarter-to-quarter drop in earnings on the costs of upgrading the production system for the company’s quarter-inch tape systems for computer data storage and backup memory.

The company said Friday that first-quarter sales of $11.1 million represented a 43% increase from $7.8 million in sales during the first quarter of fiscal 1984. The most recent sales figures also represent a 3.7% gain from the $10.7 million in revenue reported for the last quarter of 1984.