Re: floppy capacity question

[nathan@parka.winternet.com (Nathan Mates)]

In article <4s3voa$23@agate.xara.net>, Richard <rtk@scotborders.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <4s199s$ffa@news.pacifier.com>, jimbell@pacifier.com (jimbell) says:
>>Tom Zuchowski <cd003508@interramp.com> wrote:
>>>16-sector tracks and upped it to 140K.

>God, now I'm getting really pedandtic. 143K!
>OK, I'm going. Don't throw those rotten Apples at me!

   If we're gonna have a war over who's pedantic, you've got a long
way to go, kiddo. :)

   143K? Only if you're a HD manufacturer or a brainwashed metric type
who counts 1K as 1000, and 1M as 1000^2. Computers happen to use 1024,
so the 140K figure is far more correct. A //e has 64K of memory, which
is actually 65536 bytes, but it's sold as a 64K computer, not a 65K
computer.

   In other words, let's do the math: 256 bytes/sector * 16
sectors/track 35 tracks/disk is 143360 bytes/disk. That number is
fixed and correct for all normal disks (we'll ignore extra tracks that
could be hacked in for now). 143360/1024= 140K in the computer sense
of K, not the metric. 

Nathan "Another fault of the metric system exposed :)" Mates
--
<*> Nathan Mates http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~nathan/      <*>
# And he said to them, "To you has been given the secret of the
# Kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in
# parables" Mark 4:11, NRSV