Multi-platform distribution format (Was: Backups [was

[Chuck Guzis]

On 09/20/2015 03:03 PM, Fred Cisin wrote:
> On Sun, 20 Sep 2015, ben wrote:
>> I was just digging in to old CP/M a bit and it was/is tied mostly
>> to the IBM 8" standard floppy and the floppy interface used at the
>> time. Even that gave a very small amount memory per track. Ben.
>
> single sided FM/SD 77 tracks, 26 sectors per track, 128 bytes per
> sector 256,256 bytes (250.25K)

There was a good reason for that.

Many early disk controllers did not have a "write index to index" 
fucntion that also enabled writing special (i.e. missing clocks) 
characters.  As a result, one had to purchase 8" floppies pre-formatted 
(this actually persisted for quite some time).  IBM 3740 format was the 
most common format out there; hence the easiest to obtain.

--Chuck