I was not able to get access to any of my notes to more completely answer
Eric's question.
Short answer: NO. Otrona did not have two different obscure numbers of
tracks for their disk sides. On the limited number of Otronas that I
encountered. What I encountered was very straight-forward WD-like
ordinarty disk formats. IIRC, they were 10 sectors per track, with 512
bytes per sector.
There were 40 cylinder and 80 cylinder.
There was a CP/M, and an MS-DOS.
I don't remember what the distribution of those formats was, although I
specifically remember a 96tpi (800k) MS-DOS.
Ironically, the first one that I saw was a doctor at a hospital.
To flog the point about portability, Otrona did an early ad with a Chaplin
imitator trying to carry a card table with a PC on it down steps in front
of a building (capitol?) IBM claimed to own Chaplin (and did apparently
pay royalties to Chaplin estate), although Chaplin himself was not a big
fan of biug corporation.
I wasn't able to answer more fully, nor even now. I just spent a week in
the hospital. giant kidney stone and massive infection. First few days
were intolerable levels of pain. I am now on 2 weeks of 24/7 IV
antibiotic infusions. Bizarre little pump that I carry around, but, at
least I'm carrying it around at home, instead of the hospital.
THEN, in 2 weeks? they will operate to try to remove the stone. They are
hoping to do it with trans-urethral laser, with lithotripsy as a fall
back.
I had not prepared for being in the hospital, so only had a phone (Samsung
Galaxy S4), and it wasn't until the third day that I was able to wrangel
access to my pants (and pocket contents)
I think that I will recover.
THANK YOU to the folk who wrote to me with good wishes!
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com
