19 Oct
1999
19 Oct
'99
12:54 p.m.
On Tue, 19 Oct 1999, Fred Cisin (XenoSoft) wrote:
On Tue, 19 Oct 1999, Dwight Elvey wrote:
But let's muddy the conversational waters a bit :) I have no quarrel
with describing a 360k DOS disk as 40 cylinders, but let's consider a
disk such as the Xerox 820-II 5.25" DSDD. Unlike the DOS disk, the
Xerox does not read side 0 first and then continue on to side 1.
Instead, it reads track 0 side 0 and then goes on to read track 1
side 0. Is not it reasonable - perhaps more reasonable - to call the
Xerox disk an 80 track disk? Or better, an 80 track 48 tpi disk.
- don
Sectors, Tracks and Cylinders are three different
measurements.
If it is a single sided floppy, Tracks = Cylinders.
If it is double sided, Tracks = 2 * Cylinders.
Confusing huh?
If used consistently, that's fine. And it is better than much of common
usage. But there are also some people [right or wrong] who use "tracks"
to mean "tracks per side", which we call "cylinders". Their usage as
such
makes it difficult to tell when they say "80 track" whether they are
referring to a 360K or 1.2M drive. In a similar way, there are some people who call 360K
"9 sector", and some
who call it "720 sector". But at least there, there isn't any overlap of
the same number for two different usages.
Surely EVERYBODY would agree that "40 cylinder, SS or DS" is significantly
less ambiguous than "40 track v 80 track" when referring to TM 100-1 amd
-2.
--
Fred Cisin cisin(a)xenosoft.com
XenoSoft http://www.xenosoft.com
2210 Sixth St. (510) 644-9366
Berkeley, CA 94710-2219