On 31/10/2016 13:55, Noel Chiappa wrote:
I wonder why DEC did't use track 0. The thing is small enough (256KB in the
original single-density) that even 1% is a good chunk to throw away. Does
anyone know? (I had a look online, but couldn't turn anything up.)
If I had to _guess_, one possibility would be that track 0 is the innermost
track, where the media is moving the slowest, and as a result it's more
error-prone.
Except that track 0 is the outermost track, where the media is moving
fastest, and therefore perhaps the least error-prone. Except that for
many drives, it's where the heads end up after a reset or recalibration,
and on drives where the heads are (almost) always loaded, the one that
will wear most. I've seen floppies with a transparent ring near the
outer edge, and I'm sure many other listmembers have too.
--
Pete
Pete Turnbull
