7 Dec
2014
7 Dec
'14
12:46 p.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: Fred Cisin [mailto:cisin at xenosoft.com]
Sent: Saturday, December 06, 2014 12:40 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Weekly Classic Computer Trivia Question (20141205)
>On Sat, 6 Dec 2014, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> I should actually do my math before commenting. :-) It just happens,
> that by a funny accident, 1440*1024 is actually 1,474,560.
>
> But still. The actual size of the floppy wasn't decided because you
> pulled out 1440*1024, but because of the format of the darn thing.
> 1.44MB is just the closest "nice" number you can come up with after
> the fact as a way to talk about the capacity of the thing.
>
> It is not an exact number, but they seldom are, when we talk about
> storage. People like to round things off, to make it easier to talk
about.
It is NOT a "nice" number.
Honest numbers would be either 1.47 or 1.4 There is no legitimate way to
come up
with 1.44 unless you cheat and MIX powers of 10 and powers of 2.
__________________
It comes from a double capacity 720 KB FDD - which in this case are actually
KiB and not kB
However, in an incredible bit of marketing stupidity it was labeled 1.44 MB,
since 2*720 KB/1000 = 1.44 MB
Tom