Photo: Red Hill.
Kalok Octagon KL-230
Kalok was founded by a former Seagate engineer, the same man who had been largely responsible for the pioneering ST-225. Kalok seemed to live on the edge of bankruptcy most of the time, and later morphed into JTS.
Like all Kalok drives, the KL-230 had a dreadful reputation in the trade but we always found that this model went OK. We never saw new ones, only second-hand examples, so maybe all the duds had already expired by then!
Picture: A Kalok Octagon 330 — essentially an RLL certified 230 — with Western Digital 1002A-WX1 MFM XT controller. Western Digital had missed out on the biggie — the IBM contract for the PC-XT, but the company soon established itself in the industry as the hard drive controller manufacturer of choice.
| Performance | 0.19 | Reliability | AA2 |
| Data rate | 5 Mbit/sec | Spin rate | 3600 RPM |
| Seek time | 48ms | Actuator | Stepper |
| Platter capacity | 10.5MB | Interface | MFM |
| AT drive type | 2 or 6 | Form | 3.5" half-height |
| KL-230 | 21MB | 4 thin-film heads | |
| KL-330 | 30MB | 4 thin-film heads |