16 Nov
2017
16 Nov
'17
1:11 a.m.
On Wed, 15 Nov 2017, Fred Cisin wrote:
On Wed, 15 Nov 2017, Christian Corti via cctalk
wrote:
[...]
Fred, you should know by now that you don't need to tell *me* the
correct definitions and terms.
And with "high-density", I didn't mean the media capacity but the analog
recording aspects like coercivity, write current, frequency and so on.
No, the 9122C has two high-density, two-sided 80
cylinder drives. A drive
has no capacity, this is the function of the on-disk format.
;-)
"high-density" is even more meaningless than referring to them by their
capacity in a given format. It is a BOGUS marketing term! configurations that result in the same final
capacities, it is generally
accepted as to WHICH kind of drive/controller configuration is meant by each
of those names. "400K" generally means Macintosh single sided, not DEC
Rainbow, etc.
I disagree, that is not generally accepted, at least not any more, and
this is good!
Unformatted capacity would be a more correct
nomenclature, although not
always precise, and relatively meaningless to the majority of users, who
didn't CARE except for how much space was available to them. Formatted
capacity is generally between 40 and 60 percent of unformatted capacity.
Unformatted capacity doesn't tell you much without reference to the
recording layout, i.e. no. of tracks, modulation, frequency and so on.
Some specifications:
8" FM "Single Density" was 360 RPM at 250,000 bits per second. (about 500K
unformatted per side)
8" MFM "Double Density" was 360 RPM at 500,000 bits per second. (about 1M
unformatted per side)
I beg to differ. The raw bit rate is about the same. With FM, you have a
500kbits/s raw bit rate but half of the bits are clock bits. It is
effectively the same density.
5.25" MFM "High Density" was 360 RPM at
500,000 bits per second. (about 1M
unformatted per side)
What about 5?" FM "High Density" at 360 RPM?
3.5" MFM "High Density" (sometimes
called "1.44M", due to the most common
formsat being 1.41 Mebibytes, or 1.44 of a unit of 1000*1024 bytes), were 300
RPM at 500,000 bits per second. (1M unformatted per side)
The Amiga (more exactly, the "HD" Chinon FZ-357A drives used in Amigas)
switched to 150 RPM to keep the raw bit rate at 250kbits/s.
3.5" MFM "ED" (vertical
recording?/barrium ferrite) were 300 RPM at 1,000,000
bits per second. (2M unformatted per side) NeXT referred to theirs by the
unformatted capacity: 4M, further confusing their users.
What about FM?
Your list just mixes two aspects that are not strictly correlated,
raw recording density (bit rate) and data modulation (e.g. FM, MFM).
Can you name another 20 exceptions? (Chuck and Tony
probably can)
Do you want me to start with things like 100tpi drives, GCR, M?FM,
hard-sectored and other crazy formats?
Just accept that I am not as dumb as you may think.
Christian