[TUHS] Booting PDP-11's from RX02's

Noel Chiappa jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu
Mon Oct 31 08:55:20 CDT 2016


    > From: Don North

    > Track 0 is not used by standard DEC software

I wonder why DEC did't use track 0. The thing is small enough (256KB in the
original single-density) that even 1% is a good chunk to throw away. Does
anyone know? (I had a look online, but couldn't turn anything up.)

If I had to _guess_, one possibility would be that track 0 is the innermost
track, where the media is moving the slowest, and as a result it's more
error-prone. Another is that IBM used track 0 for something special, and DEC
tried to conform with that. But those are pure guesses, I would love to know
for sure.

	Noel


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