RANA Systems Elite Controller, User Manual

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ELITE SERIES USER MANUAL APPEN. A - DISK I/O
the diskette, these drives can actually access
two tracks without having to move the read/write
heads (which always move together) to another
pair of tracks. Each “pair of tracks” at which
the read/write head can stop (and successfully
read and write data) is called a cylinder.
Since the Elite One (and Apple’s Disk II) has
only one head, it has only one track for every
cylinder. This leads to the two terms (“track”
and “cylinder”) being interchanged rather freely
when discussing single headed disk drives (a
problem which tends to spill over into the dual
headed disk drive world). For the most part,
no problems of understanding arise from this
sloppy use of “computerese” (a very sacred lan-
guage).
This appendix will, in fact, continue this slop-
py exchange of these terms since, should you be
a user with a little computer experience, you
will already be used to the term “track”, and
“cylinder” probably leaves a bad taste in your
mouth (for now).
Like the Elite One, the Elite Two also has 40
cylinders; but the Elite Two is dual headed and
therefore has two tracks for every cylinder.
This gives the Elite Two a total of 80 tracks.
The Elite Three has 80 cylinders; and since it
is dual headed also, this gives it a total of
160 tracks.
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