Tandon TM 100 5 1/4" drives

From: Don Maslin <donm_at_cts.com>
Date: Tue Oct 19 19:54:17 1999

On Tue, 19 Oct 1999, Fred Cisin (XenoSoft) wrote:

> 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.

But let's muddy the conversational waters a bit :) I have no quarrel
with describing a 360k DOS disk as 40 cylinders, but let's consider a
disk such as the Xerox 820-II 5.25" DSDD. Unlike the DOS disk, the
Xerox does not read side 0 first and then continue on to side 1.
Instead, it reads track 0 side 0 and then goes on to read track 1
side 0. Is not it reasonable - perhaps more reasonable - to call the
Xerox disk an 80 track disk? Or better, an 80 track 48 tpi disk.

                                                 - don

 
> 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 - 19:54:17 BST

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