Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!decwrl!amdcad!diablo!phil From: phil@diablo.amd.com (Phil Ngai) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: MFM as an RLL drive? Message-ID: <28402@amdcad.AMD.COM> Date: 14 Dec 89 23:36:26 GMT References: <6252@wpi.wpi.edu> Sender: news@amdcad.AMD.COM Reply-To: phil@diablo.AMD.COM (Phil Ngai) Distribution: comp Organization: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Sunnyvale CA Lines: 17 In article <6252@wpi.wpi.edu> ear@wpi.wpi.edu (Eric A Rasmussen) writes: |The basic problem is that the coating on the disk is not designed to handle |the density of data used by the RLL format, and it WILL 'forget' what you have |stored there. Sorry, this is untrue. MFM and RLL both put the SAME number of flux changes on the platter. RLL just uses them more efficiently. RLL does require the flux changes to be more accurately placed timing-wise but most drives have no problem with this. Since there are no more flux changes with RLL than MFM, there is no problem with them being too close together and spontaneously disappearing. -- Phil Ngai, phil@diablo.amd.com {uunet,decwrl,ucbvax}!amdcad!phil Washington D.C. is the murder capital of the nation.