famicomaster2
Experienced Member
Yes, the WD XT-GEN card should have no problem controlling a Kalok Octagon KL-320.Found a KALOK 320 laying loose in an engine analyzer I bought. It was hooked to a WDXT-GEN card via two flat ribbon cables. My suspicion is that the drive contains the operating system for the engine analyzer and has either gone bad, never was used, or previous owner of the analyzer wasn't knowledgeable about such things. I am certainly not knowledgeable myself but want to hook it into the system and see what happens. From what you know, is the driver card the proper one? Thanks
However, unless this is the EXACT original controller, you are unlikely to recover any information from the drive, even if it is working flawlessly. The data on the drive is tied to the control card, not the drive. These are not like "modern" IDE/SATA/USB stuff where they are plug and go. The drives are just a step above being mechanical only - That is to say, they do not operate on any data on their own. Your controller decides the number of bits on a track, the number of sectors, the encoding of the data, the size of the sectors, etc.
Make sure the drive does not have a short on either power rail. Later units used tantalum filter capacitors, which most often fail short and can sometimes start small fires. If all looks good, spin the drive up. If it was parked the last time it was used, you should hear exactly the same startup as in the video above your original post. If it was not parked, the drive will skip the initial slow seek (knocking after the disks spin up) and you will just hear the squeaks at the end. If you hear that, the drive is also likely "working." From there, you can power the drive off and connect the controller and hope for the best.