12/14/2023 0 Comments Formatted floppy disk![]() ![]() There are several constants which determine the unformatted capacity: 80 tracks (really cylinders), 2 sides, 500 kbps, and 300 rpm.Ī standard FDC reads and writes 3½” HD media at 500 kbps using MFM (Modified Frequency Modulation). Since floppies store essentially analog signals, how is their theoretical capacity calculated? There are no addressable memory cells like those in RAM chips, so how does one arrive at 2 MB? The math is actually remarkably straightforward and has little to do with the medium and everything to do with the floppy controller (FDC) and drive. Note: This discussion is limited to 3½” high-density floppies, by far the most common format, unless otherwise noted. And that one megabyte is not like another. After more or less accidentally coming across a BBS listing of various high-capacity floppy formatting programs, I began wondering: How much data can really be stored on a diskette in a PC floppy drive? And what’s the relationship between formatted and unformatted capacity? When I started doing the math, I realized that the problem is both simpler and more complex than I had thought. ![]()
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