Re: Apple II-Or Come on people, It's a 20 year old computer

[pausch@saafNOSPAM.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <398EC312.6A5F2124@blakespot.com>,
Blake Patterson  <blake@blakespot.com> wrote:
 
> Paul Schlyter wrote:
> 
>> But I suppose the history matters too.  And at the time of the Apple
>> II, it made great sense to use GCR, since it provided 100k instead of
>> 60k or 80k of the MFM 5.25" disk formats of those days.
> 
> Apple II 5.25" floppies were 143K actually.  Not too bad for the time.
 
Later versions of Apple II 5.25" floppies were 140K = 143360 bytes
(note that one KByte equals 1024 bytes, not 1000 bytes): 16
sectors/track and 35 tracks, where each sector held 256 bytes of data.
 
But the first version of Apple II floppies were 116480 bytes = 113.75
bytes (13 sectors/track and 35 tracks, where each sector held 256
bytes of data.), which admittedly is somewhat more than 100 Kbytes,
but not that much more.
 
The Apple Pascal system introduced the 16-sector 140K disk format
in 1979/1980.  About a year later, DOS 3.3 arrived, which supported
the 16-sector format too.  And in between, Softcard CP/M was released,
with system diskettes in both 13-sector and 16-sector formats.
 
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