On Thu, Jan 13, 2005 at 03:14:06PM +0100, Frode Tenneboe wrote: > On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 13:11:45 +0100 "Edwin Blink" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > Just side one. > > Tracks are always on just one of the sides. Cylinders are on > both (or all, for multi platter devices). :)
On the SAM, "cylinder" isn't a word you see very often. The only reason I can see for treating side 1 as the first half of the disk, and side 2 as the second half is that it's simpler for single-sided disks. Of course, if swapping between sides (on the DISCiPLE) is as expensive as stepping, there'd be no point in storing tracks on alternating sides. One problem I can see is that you'd have to format both sides of the disk together, otherwise there'd be an extra delay (< 0.2s) when going from the last sector of one track to the first sector of the next track. -- Stuart Brady
