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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!rutgers!ames!sdcsvax!nosc!cod!bmarsh
From: bmarsh@cod.UUCP (William C. Marsh)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Reading MacDisks on Amiga
Message-ID: <687@cod.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 19-May-87 11:26:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: cod.687
Posted: Tue May 19 11:26:37 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 20-May-87 05:10:36 EDT
References: <8705080543.AA18112@cory.Berkeley.EDU>
Reply-To: bmarsh@cod.nosc.mil.UUCP (William C. Marsh)
Organization: Naval Ocean Systems Center, San Diego
Lines: 30
Xref: mnetor comp.sys.amiga:4970 comp.sys.ibm.pc:4189

In article <494@uhccux.UUCP> yuan@uhccux.UUCP (Yuan Chang) writes:
>In article <1542@cadovax.UUCP> keithd@cadovax.UUCP (Keith Doyle) writes:
>>Anybody have any idea how the new IBM PS/2 line gets 1.4 meg on 3 1/2 inch
>>floppy?  sounds like 720k a side.
>
>     It simply uses more tracks per side (160 tracks, versus 80 track/surface
>on the Amiga).  Yes, it is 720K/side.
>

According to the DOS 3.3 Technical Reference Manual (which IBM sent to me for
some unknown reason) the two 'formats' for 3.5" media are as follows:

	Sides		Sectors/Track	Media Descriptor
	  2		      9		      F9H
	  2		     18		      F0H

It looks like they put twice the number of sectors on the little disk, instead
of twice the number of tracks.  That means there won't be any "I can't write
720K disks in my 1.4M drive" problems like with the 1.2M drives in the AT.

What, IBM learning from their mistakes?  Maybe someday they will come out with
a keyboard where you don't want to swap at least two keys...

----------

Bill Marsh, Naval Ocean Systems Center, San Diego, CA
{arpa,mil}net: bmarsh@cod.nosc.mil
uucp: {ihnp4,akgua,decvax,dcdwest,ucbvax}!sdcsvax!nosc!bmarsh

"If everything seems to be coming your way, you're probably in the wrong lane."