On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 1:28 PM, jim s <jws at jwsss.com> wrote:
I'm curious how many sectors / track these packs
were supposed to have. ?The
photo of the bottom clearly showed it was > 12 which is what I thought DEC
used.
Are you perhaps thinking of RK05 cartridges? Those have visible
notches on the hub and come in 12-sector versions for 16-bit hosts and
16-sector versions for 12-bit hosts (same number of bits per track,
just grouped differently).
The RL01 and RL02 use embedded servo data (with no way to restore that
in the field, so bulk-erased packs are useless in DEC drives). The
stickers and handles are color coded (brown vs blue). All other
external indicators are the same between the two types of packs.
http://www.pdp-11.nl/peripherals/disk/rl-info.html
the Microdata systems always used 24 / track with 256
byte sectors.
Jim
40 sectors per track, 256 byte sectors. RL01s have 256 tracks per
surface, RL02s have 512 tracks per surface (different heads, and
either different boards inside, or same boards but different jumper
settings depending on the revision). As a result, one can rig RL02s
to (safely) read RL01 packs, but I've never done it myself).
-ethan