Sector Interleave

Mike Stein mhs.stein at gmail.com
Mon Nov 30 15:21:06 CST 2015


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Paul Koning" <paulkoning at comcast.net>
Sent: Monday, November 30, 2015 3:55 PM

> On Nov 30, 2015, at 3:45 PM, Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote:
> 
> Oversimplified remedial tutorial:
> Ideally, the system reads a sector, does what it has to do with the content, and goes back for the next one, and can read every sector of the track in a single revolution.
> ...
> It is USUALLY the same on every track, but there are rare exceptions. And different disk formats from the same manufacturer may be different.

Your writeup was aimed at floppy disks, but interleave may also appear on hard drives.  I don't remember it in reasonably modern systems, but it shows up on CDC 6000 systems. 

----- Reply -----

Definitely an issue with IBM PC/XTs and clones; I recall testing every new combination of HD and controller for most efficient interleave before I delivered to the client.

m


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