Reiability of wrong media (was: is out of 5-1/4" diskettes

From: Megan <mbg_at_world.std.com>
Date: Thu Jan 21 22:32:11 1999

><RANT> There ain't no sech thing as a 1.44M disk. The IBM style of HD
>3.5has 2 sides, 80 tracks per side, 18 sectors per track, and 512 bytes
>per sector. If you multiply that out, you get 1.406 HONEST Megabytes
>(1048576). The only way to get 1.44 out of that is to creatively
>redefine a Megabyte to be 1024000 bytes. That leaves IBM in the position
>of claiming that a megabyte of memory is 1048576 bytes, but that a
>megabyte of disk space is 1024000 bytes! If IBM ran a donut shop, how
>many donuts would there be in a dozen??? </RANT>

Hmm... then why does a chkdsk a: on a '1.44' drive and disk return
the following:

- - - - -
    1,457,664 bytes total disk space
          512 bytes in 1 directories
    1,185,792 bytes in 20 user files
      271,360 bytes available on disk

          512 bytes in each allocation unit
        2,847 total allocation units on disk
          530 available allocation units on disk
- - - - -

You had better check *your* math!

        2 * 80 * 18 * 512 = 1474560

Sure looks like at least 1.44 Mb to me!

                                        Megan Gentry
                                        Former RT-11 Developer

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Received on Thu Jan 21 1999 - 22:32:11 GMT

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