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Konan KDC-230  -  Some Information


The following was written by modem7 of the Vintage Computer Forums.



Introduction

The Konan KDC-230 is an 'MFM' controller designed for the IBM XT (IBM 5160), and suitable XT clones.

It can be used in the IBM PC (IBM 5150) as well, noting that:
  - The IBM PC's motherboard will require the final BIOS (dated 10/27/82 - see here).
  - The IBM PC's 63W power supply may need to be upgraded in order to cope with the hard drive's power requirements.

The KDC-230 is a 'dynamic' type of controller - see here.


Card Jumper Settings

Unknown.

The settings on my (fully functional) card are shown at here.


Cabling Diagram

The hard drive connects to connectors J0 and J1.  On those connectors, pin 1 is at the top (which is different to some other controllers).

A cabling diagram is at here.  If you only have a 'flat' (untwisted) control cable, then note the golden text in the top right of the diagram.


Low-Level Format

If a drive is connected that the KDC-230 has yet to write to, when the computer boots, the BIOS expansion ROM on the KDC-230 will present a menu.
The menu's title is, "KDC/KXP DISK SET-UP UTILITY".

1.	You then press the F2 key, which takes you to the KDC/KXP DISK CONFIGURE UTILITY screen.
2.	For the PHYSICAL UNIT question, enter: 0
3.	Enter values for the remaining eight questions, noting: - SECTORS/TRACK is normally 17   - For START SPARES, enter: off   - For STEP MODE, enter: 6 (slow, to be safe) - For CORRECTION SPAN, enter: 11 (default value)
4.	You will then be asked if you want to write the configuration to disk.  Enter: y
5.	You will then be asked if you want to format the disk.  Enter: y
6.	You will then be asked for the interleave.  Enter: 3                 (interleave affects performance only)
	Low-level formatting will start.  You will see that the hard drive's LED is on solid. Low-level formatting will take a few minutes.  When complete, you will be taken to the KDC/KXP DISK SET-UP UTILITY screen.
7.	Proceed to partition and then high-level format the drive.  You will need a DOS boot floppy for that.  An example procedure is at here

Set-Up Menu

Another way of displaying the set-up menu ('KDC/KXP DISK SET-UP UTILITY') is to use DOS' Debug program as follows:

A:>debug
- g=c800:0

Normally, you would not need to do that, because the menu is automatically displayed when the KDC-230 detects a drive that it has yet to write to.

Some possible reasons for using the Debug method are:
• You have already used the KDC-230 to low-level format the drive, but some some reason, you want to do that again.
• You suspect that your KDC-230 is faulty, and you want to see if at least you can bring up the menu.



Replacment ROM's

The KDC-230 has two ROM's.

In support of creating replacement ROM's (or EPROM's), images of the two ROM's are are here.
The images would be programmed ('burnt') into EPROM's of type 2764 or 27C64, rated at 250ns or faster.

If you do not have the means to create the ROM's/EPROM's yourself, the people/companies are here can do it for you.