29 Dec
2010
29 Dec
'10
2:18 p.m.
On 29 Dec 2010 at 18:48, Tony Duell wrote:
My point was that the OP stated "8" drives at least as used in tandy
computers..." and that I have a Model 16 for example, that uses 8" DS
drives.
On 28 Dec 2010 at 16:52, Geoffrey Reed wrote:
I thought that at least the earlier Tandy 8" machines had single-head
drives, in which case'track' == 'cylinder'. ISTR: the 8" drives at least as used in
tandy computers formatted
out to 77 tracks....
That's standard for all 8" drives--and it's "cylinders", please!
8"
drives can be double-sided with 2 tracks per cylinder. I can't rememebr which machine it was, but one
machine with 5.25"
drives claimed to have '80 track' drives. What they actually were were
40 cylinder, 2 head drives. So technically they did have 80 tracks,
but it caused a lot of confusion at the time.
I've seen many times where the characteristics of a 3.5" floppy are
given as "160 tracks". My take is that if you mean a physical head
position, it's best to say "cylinders".
Just as you would with a hard drive. For the life of me, I don't see
why some folks insist on treating the nomenclature for hard and
floppy drives differently.
--Chuck