luis@oakhill.UUCP (Luis Basto) (09/17/85)
Distribution: In the Help Key section of the premiere issue of Amigaworld a question is asked about Amiga's drive. The answer goes "... disks are 80-track, formatted as 11 sectors per track, with 512 bytes per sector, giving a total of 880K bytes per disk." I can get only 440K from the above numbers. Or are these specs only for 1 side?
aer@alice.UucP (y) (09/20/85)
When you multiply 80 tracks time 11 sectors/track time 512 bytes/sec, you get 440K all right (formatted.) The Amiga drive is double-sided, and NOT flip double-sided. It works, I suspect, like an IBM PC drive, alternating tracks on one side then the next (two r/w heads.) Thus the drive is 880K. The Atari 530ST, on the other hand is something like 360K per side, and you must physically flip and notch in holes I suspect to get the amount Atari advertises. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- d. rosenberg on Murray Hill /\ at ATT/BTL uucp: ..!ihnp4!alice!aer -- mail subject TO DAN My opinions are my own. -----------------------------------------------------------------------
OPER.CRUM@UTAH-20.ARPA (09/21/85)
From: Gary L. Crum <oper.crum@UTAH-20.ARPA> In Message-Id: <8509200518.AA01335@topaz.rutgers.edu>, D. Rosenberg writes: > The Atari 530ST, on the other hand is something like 360K per side, > and you must physically flip and notch in holes I suspect to get the > amount Atari advertises. The Atari 530ST? Hmm... I haven't heard of that one. I suppose that it has around 524K of RAM, considering Atari's strange naming scheme:-) Perhaps there are individuals that use the "notch and flip" technique with 5.25" diskettes, but most users of Atari 68000 based machines use 3.5" micro- floppies, which are somewhat more polarized. -------
dan@BBN-LABS-B.ARPA (09/21/85)
From: Dan Franklin <dan@BBN-LABS-B.ARPA> The Atari 520ST uses 3.5" diskettes, and with a double-sided drive you get 720kbytes or so, without notching and flipping (which isn't possible anyway). I suspect that it, like IBM PCs, uses double-sided diskettes in "cylinder" fashion to speed it up. Dan
peter@graffiti.UUCP (Peter da Silva) (09/22/85)
> When you multiply 80 tracks time 11 sectors/track time 512 bytes/sec, you > get 440K all right (formatted.) The Amiga drive is double-sided, and > NOT flip double-sided. It works, I suspect, like an IBM PC drive, > alternating tracks on one side then the next (two r/w heads.) Thus the > drive is 880K. I hope you can tell it to use 9 secs/track for compatibility with everyone elses 3.5" formats, which all seem to be 720K. > The Atari 530ST, on the other hand is something like 360K per side, > and you must physically flip and notch in holes I suspect to get the > amount Atari advertises. You can't flip & punch holes on a 3.5" diskette, friend. It's not physically possible. Well, I don't know about the 530ST, but I just played with a 520ST at a computer store, and it had DS 3.5" drives. They also have SS drives, which may be what's confusing you. Incidentally Let me give the 520 an A for ambition and a C- for implementation. It would really have been better to just give it CP/M68K and toss in GEM as an extra instead of mashing the two together like that. It looks like a toy. It feels like a toy. And now people who want to do their own windowing stuff and make at look like a real workstation are out of luck.