Jump to content

Draft:Kalok

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kalok Corporation
Company typePrivate
Defunct1994
Key people
Steven L. Kaczeus - Founder David B. Pearce
ProductsHard 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for their reliability or speed, and still used stepper motor head actuator technology in 1991, which was considered outdated as the hard drive industry moved to voice coil head actuators.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

[edit]

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

[edit]

KL-230

[edit]
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

[edit]

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

[edit]
  1. ^ "C1579464 - KALOK CORPORATION". Dr. Shirley N. Weber California Secretary of State. 19 Feb 1987. Retrieved 23 Sep 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  2. ^ Electronic News. SAGE. 1988. p. 13.
  3. ^ US patent 5446609, "Low profile disk drive assembly", issued 1995-08-29, assigned to TEAC Corporation and Pont Peripherals Corporation 
  4. ^ US patent 5886850, "High capacity, low profile disk drive system", issued 1999-03-23, assigned to TEAC Corporation and DZU Corporation 
  5. ^ "SD3250N, SD3360N, SD3540N (Removable Hard Disk Drives) - Installation guides and CMOS setup parameters" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2006-11-11.
  6. ^ "Form S-4: Registration under the Securities Act of 1933: JTS Corporation". 1996-06-22. Retrieved 2008-01-25.
[edit]
  • "Kalok". Hardware Collection (in Chinese and English). Archived from the original on 2017-03-28. Retrieved 2017-03-28. (NB. An (incomplete) list of hard disk drives produced by Kalok.)

Category:Defunct computer hardware companies Category:Computer storage companies Category:Companies disestablished in 1994