Those Bulgarians at DZU-AD in Stara Zagora are really doing rather well in convincing US companies that they really do have exploitable disk drive manufacturing skills, and following the decision in September by Aura Associates Inc to have DZU assemble 1.8 thin-film head assemblies (CI No 2,021), DZU has won another deal. The partner this time is Sunnyvale, California-based Kalok Corp, which specialises in low-profile disk drives for portable and desktop computers. DZU, which has made an equity investment in Kalok, will assemble Kalok drives in part of its 2m square foot Stara Zagora facilities from complete kits supplied by Kalok. Drives assembled by DZU will be shipped back to Kalok for distribution to customers in the US, Canada and Latin America, and DZU may later supply the Western European market directly. Production of half-inch high 3.5 Point5 drives has already started in Stara Zagora. Claimed to be the thinnest 3.5 disks on the market, they run off a 5V power supply, and dissipate 2.5W, which Kalok says is in line with the power consumption of 2.5 drives. They can also be configured as removable drives, but Kalok did not give any indication of prices or capacities – when it started it made 85Mb drives with 25mS access time (CI No 1,440).
Content from our partners
