Re: Did Commodore cheat with the quad density floppies?

From: William Levak <wlevak_at_SDF.ORG>
Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2019 00:44:55 +0000 (UTC)
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.1901030042430.24074@sdf.lonestar.org>
Also, the GCR format is much more reliable than the MFM format.  With a 
small number of consecutive zeros, the error rate is less.

On Wed, 2 Jan 2019, Francesco Messineo wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 2, 2019 at 3:40 PM André Fachat <afachat@gmx.de> wrote:
>>
>> Hi there,
>>
>> I was looking at floppy disk recording schemes and I am wondering if the
>> 8050/8250/1001 floppy disk format with over 500kB per side was actually out
>> of spec of even the Quad Density disks?
>>
>> The recording frequency was increased from 250kHz to 375kHz (× 1.5, for the
>> innermost i.e. most critical track/speed zone). That resulted in a much
>> increased number of bits per inch. See here:
>> https://extrapages.de/archives/20190102-Floppy-notes.html
>>
>> What do you think?
>>
>
> I'm sure you know it, but the best reference I've found on the net
> about floppy disk drives is here:
>
> http://www.retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff/drive.html
>
> First of all, 100 tpi drives have an offset recording window with
> respect to 48 tpi drives. Track 0 is a bit closer to the outer edge of
> the media with respect to the 48 tpi track 0 (or track 1 as CBM
> counted them), but that doesn't really change much. The BPI rating of
> the media isn't an absolute value imho (3000 for FM at 125Kbps and
> 6000 for MFM at 250kbps are just what is achievable with these
> modulations). I think the CBM designers just tried to pack as many
> sectors as it was reliable. Original 2040 format on 48 tpi drive had
> one sector more on one zone than the vastly more common 4040/1541
> format and I think they just decreased the later format by one sector
> because it was a bit too unreliable. Same thing must have happened on
> the 100 tpi drives, they tried to pack as much as was possible with
> 300 oersted media.
> Frank
>
>
>

wlevak@sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org
Received on 2019-01-03 02:00:03

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