Company:Kalok
 | |
| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Defunct | 1994 |
Key people | Steven L. Kaczeus - Founder David B. Pearce |
| Products | Hard Drives |
The Kalok Corporation was an American hard disk drive manufacturer company that was headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. It designed and manufactured low-cost 3.5-in hard disk drives for desktop computers before going bankrupt in 1994.
Kalok's products were not very well known for their reliability or speed, and still used stepper motor head actuator technology in 1991, which was considered outdated as the hard drive industry moved to voice coil head actuators.
History
On February 19, 1987, Kalok was first registered as a corporation with Wayne C. Lockhart as the president.[1]
On August 8, 1988, Kalok announced the KL341 and KL343, both 40 MB hard drives, along with the KL332, a 30 MB hard drive. They cost under $330 each and were for OEM's with Kalok planning 100, 170, and 330 MB drives for workstations that would hopefully be released in Q4 of 1989.[2]
On June 6, 1992, Steven L. Kaczeus took over as President of Kalok.
On December 17, 1992, David B. Pearce took over as the new secretary of Kalok.
In 1990, Kalok reached almost $80 million in sales.
In 1994 Kalok went bankrupt and David B. Pearce moved on to found JT Storage Inc, another hard disk drive manufacturer with Sirjang Lal Tandon and Tom Mitchel. JT Storage would continue engineering and development programs from the defunct Kalok Corporation.
Hard Drive Models
KL-230
| Model no. | Gen. | Released | Capacity | Cache | Speed | Interface | Feature set | Sector Size | Notes | Product Page |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KL-230 | 1 | 2003 | 20 MB | 3600 RPM | MFM, ST412 | – | 512 bytes | – | Specifications | |
| KL-320 | 21 MB | MFM, ST506 | 512 bytes | |||||||
| KL-330 | 33 MB | 3600 RPM | RLL, ST506 | 512 bytes | ||||||
| KL-332 | 1989 | 30 MB | ESDI | 512 bytes | ||||||
| KL-340 | 43 MB | MFM, ST506 | 512 bytes | |||||||
| KL-341 | 1989 | 40 MB | 8 KB | 3600 RPM | SCSI-1 | 512 bytes | ||||
| KL-342 | 43 MB | RLL, ST506 | 512 bytes | |||||||
| KL-343 | 1989 | 40 MB | RLL, ST506 | 512 bytes | ||||||
| KL-360 | 66 MB | RLL, ST506 | 512 bytes | |||||||
| KL-381 | 85 MB | SCSI-1 | 512 bytes | |||||||
| KL-383 | 85 MB | RLL, ST506 | 512 bytes | |||||||
| KL-3100 | 1991 | 105 MB | 32 KB | 3662 RPM | Parallel ATA | 512 bytes | ||||
| KL-3120 | 121 MB | Parallel ATA | 512 bytes | |||||||
| P5-125A | 126 MB | Parallel ATA | 512 bytes | |||||||
| P5-125S | 126 MB | SCSI-2 | 512 bytes | |||||||
| P5-250A | 252 MB | Parallel ATA | 512 bytes | |||||||
| P5-250S | 252 MB | SCSI-2 | 512 bytes | |||||||
| K-Stor 250 | 250 MB | Parallel ATA | 512 bytes | |||||||
| K-Stor 360 | 360 MB | Parallel ATA | 512 bytes | |||||||
| K-Stor 540 | 540 MB | Parallel ATA | 512 bytes |
Services
One of their last offerings was a 100 megabyte 3.5-inch disk drive using a stepper motor head actuator (rather than the servo-based voice coil operated actuators used on most drives of that density) and was very limited in both access speed and reliability. The drive was manufactured in India , and was commonly found in very inexpensive generic PCs.
In the early 1990s, Kalok also designed hard disks for TEAC[3][4] who used them as part of a removable hard disk drive system,[5] which was also sold under the Kalok name. After Kalok failed in 1994, JT Storage (JTS) hired its founder as their chief technical officer, and licensed the patents involved from TEAC and Pont Peripherals.[6]
References
- ↑ "C1579464 - KALOK CORPORATION". 19 Feb 1987. https://businesssearch.sos.ca.gov/CBS/Detail.
- ↑ Electronic News. SAGE. 1988. pp. 13. https://archive.org/details/sim_electronic-news_1988-08-08_34_1718/page/n13/mode/2up?q=kalok+Octagon.
- ↑ "Low profile disk drive assembly" US patent 5446609, issued 1995-08-29, assigned to TEAC Corporationand Pont Peripherals Corporation
- ↑ "High capacity, low profile disk drive system" US patent 5886850, issued 1999-03-23, assigned to TEAC Corporationand DZU Corporation
- ↑ "SD3250N, SD3360N, SD3540N (Removable Hard Disk Drives) - Installation guides and CMOS setup parameters". Archived from the original on 2006-11-11. https://web.archive.org/web/20061111044628/http://www.teac.com/DSPD/pdf/hdd0040a.pdf.
- ↑ "Form S-4: Registration under the Securities Act of 1933: JTS Corporation". 1996-06-22. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/941167/0000950153-96-000413.txt.
External links
- "Kalok" (in Chinese, English). Hardware Collection. http://yjfy.com/Hardware/harddisk/kalok.htm. (NB. An (incomplete) list of hard disk drives produced by Kalok.)
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