R.S. wrote:
J.R. is more right than guy before him. 64k or 64Ki can be interpreted as numbers. In this case we talk about ABSTR, so the value is NUMBER OF TRACKS, not bytes. It is *not* 65536B-1, it is 65536-1 tracks.
While Seymour was wrong with KiB, as you note that should have been Ki tracks, I've never seen K or Ki used for plain numerics.
I don't know whether it is proper or "IBM approved", but IT people often use "64k" or "16M" as numbers. No unit specified. Number only. Maybe it's improper, but it is *common*.
Sorry, but in forty-odd years I've never seen that.
Usually they mean "binary" kilo and mega, although it is not proper in aspect of IS standard. However this is different story: for example every RAM manufacturer use MB and GB instead of correct MiB and GiB.
Probably because the "i" qualifier is relatively recent? I do remember Seagate and others using decimal capacities because it made their disks appear bigger (e.g., 65K tracks rather than 64K).
BTW: In Europe we *say* "kilo" as abbreviation of "kilogram", but we *write* it properly: "kg", so assumption about kilograms is bad shot.
Perhaps in your neck of the woods, but I spent fourteen years in Austria and saw plenty of stores with prices with just a K. And technically, it should be Kg, not kg, because the convention is to capitalize multiplicative prefixes.
Gerhard Postpischil Bradford, VT new e-mail address: gerhardp (at) charter (dot) net ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
