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From: davidsen@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP (William E. Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: new floppy format proposal
Message-ID: <7735@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 30-Oct-87 16:04:34 EST
Article-I.D.: steinmet.7735
Posted: Fri Oct 30 16:04:34 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 4-Nov-87 21:11:37 EST
References: <4289@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> <1155@cup.portal.com>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 29

In article <1155@cup.portal.com> Dion_L_Johnson@cup.portal.com writes:
|I think the Victor PC used a type of floppy drive that had a variable
|rotation speed, in order to accomplish more uniform (and therefore
|greater) density recording on diskettes.

True. The Victor kept the linear speed of the media constant relative to
the head. This allowed the data on the outer tracks to be packed as
densely as the data on the inner tracks. As I recall the number of
sectors per track was variable.

[ ... ]

|Here is a new idea which is mine.  My idea, which now follows is my idea. :-)
|
|How about defining a new floppy format where the outside of the disk is
|formatted high-density, and the inside is formatted low-density.  This
|way, you should be able to comfortably and reliably pack about 800k-1000k
|of data on the dirt-cheap floppies.  All you would need to do is rewrite
|the DOS block device driver to recognize this special format automatically.

High density diskettes have different coatings. The material used has a
higher hysterysis (it is harder to magnetize and demagnetize). I doubt
that a diskette which used one oxide on the inner tracks and one on the
outer would be dirt cheap. Victor got the only free lunch there was,
they pushed the outer tracks as hard as the inner.
-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu@ge-crd.arpa)
  {uunet | philabs | seismo}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me