On Tue, 19 Oct 1999, Dwight Elvey wrote:
> 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_at_xenosoft.com
XenoSoft http://www.xenosoft.com
2210 Sixth St. (510) 644-9366
Berkeley, CA 94710-2219
Received on Tue Oct 19 1999 - 17:08:26 BST