3.5" drives (720,1.4 or 2.8)

From: Fred Cisin <cisin_at_xenosoft.com>
Date: Tue Aug 5 18:00:01 2003

On Tue, 5 Aug 2003, Tony Duell wrote:
> > 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 :-)

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.


> > 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)...

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.


> > ... 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.

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?
Received on Tue Aug 05 2003 - 18:00:01 BST