Bruce Hewson wrote:
Well folks,
until M$ came along, and before KiB became a standard, I was taught the
convention as:
Disk: always use decimal value, i.e. KB = 1000 Bytes.
Memory: always use binary value, i.e. KB = 1024 Bytes.
That made it easy:.....
It's not easy. For example, you cannot dump 15MB region of memory (RAM)
to 15MB file. It doesn't mention tapes, wires (10MB/s - is it "binary"
or "decimal" ?), etc.
BTW: I was taught different convention: IT uses k as 1024 (1kB = 1024
bytes), rest of the universe use k as 1000. That looks much easier for
me. Of course the best is unambiguous convention, like Ki,Mi,Gi etc.
Unfortunately it came very late, too late. People were using k,M,G as
"binary" prefixes for years, it's very hard to change their accustoms.
See non-metric measures in U.S. (*)
IMHO, that HDD vendors found a way to "increase" their capacities by
using "decimal" prefixes. They even tried to use "unformatted capacity",
but quickly gave up since, noone could use such capacity. Sometimes we
see "2.0MB" on 3.5" diskettes, those which we use as 1.44MB. I know,
there are ways to use non-standard format and have more than 1.44MB, but
it was never 2.0MB (usually 1.68-1.72 MB).
Caution: disktettes marked 'ED', sometimes used by IBM, at capacity
2.88MB is different story.
Now with M$ (and others), you never know where they use 1000 or use 1024
in their arithmetic to calculate the number they report to you on memory or
disk usage. Very much like the Mix-N-Match shops.
I don't like M$ also, but honestly I don't see any reason to blame M$
for kB-KiB confusion.
Which is one reason I seem to always use Tracks/Cylinders when
reporting/allocation 3390 dasd space (assumptions gone).
The only reason I why I use tracks is ISPF and z/OS 'file system'. ISPF
shows dataset size in tracks, the track cannot belong to more than one
dataset (which is space waste for small datasets).
While FBA disk emulates geometry of tracks and cylinders as well as CKD,
I never use tracks when working on Windows, Linux, AIX, VMS, Solaris or
NetWare.
(*) I don't like pounds, gallons, and even don't know how much fl oz is,
but I like "time for pint" <vbg>
--
Radoslaw Skorupka
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