24 Apr
2011
24 Apr
'11
10:33 a.m.
On 24/04/11 15:43, Alexandre Souza - Listas wrote:
From what I heard, Kalok was started by the guy who was responsible for
the Seagate ST225, and was later absorbed into JTS. From the Redhill
Guide [1]:
On 24/04/11
03:38, Eric Smith wrote:
Was it WORSE than JTS? Never seen one of these in Brazil... Well, as compared to some brands, yes. JTS comes
to mind, though it
wasn't contemporary with the ST-225.
What about the Kalok Octagon series?
*shudder* Kalok Octagon KL-230
Kalok was founded by a former Seagate engineer, the same man who had
been largely responsible for the ST-225. The company seemed to live
on the edge of bankruptcy most of the time, and later morphed into
JTS. Like all Kalok drives, the KL-230s had a dreadful reputation but
we always found this model pretty good. We never saw new ones, only
second-hand, so maybe all the duds had already expired by then.
And a bit more in a later section of the RHG [2]:
Kalok Octagon KL3100
Possibly the worst drive ever made. Kalok went out of business in
1994, and no wonder! These were a valiant attempt to produce a modern
drive without really having the capabilities. It was a reasonably
fast IDE drive, with a nice black finish, and dreadful old stepper
technology inside. We've only ever seen three of these things, and
none of them worked for long. Another one came into the shop a year
or two ago ? that's it in the picture ? but we have never been brave
enough to plug it in.
We first met the Octagon back in the days when 245 and 345MB drives
were selling new. We traded it in sight unseen and brand unknown on
the understanding that it would be in good working order with no bad
sectors. When we opened up the case and saw what it was, we didn't
want it ? they were notorious even then ? but we hadn't specified any
particular brand when talking to our customer and weren't really in a
position to go back on the deal without breaking faith. So we tested
it: tested it with every diagnostic program we could lay our hands
on, hoping to find an objective problem (any problem!) which would
justify us not taking it. It made all the usual weird Kalok noises
and ? passed everything. So we had to take it. But still we didn't
trust it, and we kept it in-house on the test-bench for six months or
so and never had the slightest problem. Eventually, we had to admit
that it was in perfect working order and there was no reason why we
shouldn't sell it just the same as any other drive.
It was back the very next day: dead as mutton. We gave our customer a
bigger brand-new Maxtor instead, so he was happy, but we were several
hundred dollars poorer. For years after that, when we traded in a
drive by telephone, we would still say it had to be "in good working
order" but then add "and of reputable manufacture"!
[1]: http://www.redhill.net.au/d/d-a.html
[2]: http://www.redhill.net.au/d/d-b.html
One of those little bastards was the reason I got banned from the
computer lab at school. Our "industry expert" IT teacher theorised that
because the machine was "working" when he switched it on in the morning
(it booted to RISC OS, he didn't try running anything -- early versions
of RISC OS can boot and run entirely from ROM) then "someone must have
run a program that broke the hard drive". His words exactly.
What I'd like to know is how the guy responsible for what was reputed to
be one of the most reliable drives ever (the ST225), could later go on
and design the LEAST reliable drive *series* ever made (the Octagon)...
BTW, there's a HP 16700B on ebay at the moment which appears to have
been used at Maxtor. Item number 190524469565 if anyone's interested.
Note the hostname shown -- from what I can gather, "corp.mxtr.net" was
the DNS suffix used by Maxtor's corporate network.
(Yes, the hostname could have been changed in the meantime, but it's an
interesting escapee nonetheless -- I'd have expected Maxtor / Seagate to
destroy the HDD before letting it out of the building...)
--
Phil.
classiccmp at philpem.me.uk
http://www.philpem.me.uk/