5 Aug
2003
5 Aug
'03
6 p.m.
On Tue, 5 Aug 2003, Tony Duell wrote:
Thank you for catching my mistake. What I meant to say was 80 tracks per
side. I often [erroneously] leave off the requisite "per side".
I also sometimes say "9 sectors", when it is actually "9 sectors per
track", which works out to 360, 720, or 1440 sectors [total].
Maybe, if I started saying "cylinders", I might make fewer mistakes.
I kinda knew that one would get a rise out of you. Statistically, they
would be "rare" in comparison to the zilions of uninteresting PC drives.
I assumed that, but didn't want to take a chance on exceptions.
For example, there was a 5.25" drive from Weltec that ran at 180 RPM, in
order to get 1.2M from a 250K data transfer rate (1.2M on an XT!)
Did anyone ever make a 150RPM 3.5", in order to get 1.4M from a 250K data
transfer rate?
But 720K,
1.4M, and 2.8M are all 80 track, at 135 tracks per inch.
Err, strictly they're
all 160 track. What you meant, I guess, is 80
_cylinders_.
I have the docs for some 5.25" floppy drives which correctly describe the
40 cylinder DS and 80 cylinder SS models as both having 80 tracks. That
confuses a lot of people :-) With the
exception of some of the rarer early Sony drives (600RPM), and
Rare? I think
that's the most common sort of 3.5" drive round here (maybe
because I'm an HP addict)... ... except . .
. , ALL of the 3.5" drives are 300 RPM.
And AFAIK _all_ 1.44M drives are
300rpm. I've never seen a 600rpm version.