Subject: Floppy disks

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 01 Apr 92 09:44:57 BST

While we're on the subject of renaming devices, floppy disks
are long overdue for a replacement -- the MINIX names are
unmemorable and unsystematic.  The suggestion has been raised
that we use fd0a, where 0 is the drive number and a is a format
defined somewhere or other (specifically in floppy.c).
 
This has a clean, tidy look, but there is a slight disadvantage:
remembering which format code letter refers to a disk of a given
size and density in a given drive.  Is it possible to suggest --
just to prompt a reaction -- something like this:
 
     fd0d5   Drive 0, 5.25 inch disk, double density.
     fd1q3   Drive 1, 3.5 inch disk, quad density.
     fd0h3   Drive 0, 3.5 inch disk, high density.
 
If this scheme were adopted, we should have the following table:
 
    Old    New    Size  bytes  tracks  sectors
    PS0    fd0h3  3.5   1.4mb  80      18
    at0    fd0h5  5.25  1.2mb  80      15
    ps0    fd0q3  3.5   720kb  80       9
    qh0    fd0q5  5.25  720kb  80       9
     ?     fd0d3  3.5   360kb  40       9
    pc0    fd0d5  5.25  360kb  40       9
 
This takes into account the various disks, but ignores the
drive capacity; I don't know what problems this would cause.
But in any case, I should find the [qdh][35] system much
easier to use and remember than any [a-h] system, which would
always involve digging out a table.
 
     -- Owen
     [email-masked]