Re: Configure.help editorial policy

Andries.Brouwer
2001-12-25T20:54:50Z

> > In many cases binary and decimal units are mixed,
> > leading to something which is impossible to "get right".
> > Disk space would be one example of this.
>
> No. All disk manufacturers only use decimal units.

Really? Even ATA flashcard manufacturers? So now I have to know if
CF-card has spinning parts to decide size?

What makes you think so?

Looking at a flash card here (sold as 8 MB), I see

SCSI device sdb: 15872 512-byte hdwr sectors (8 MB)

Now if the manufacturer claimed 8 MiB I could sue him,
but since he only claims 8 MB, this one is large enough
(it has 31 . 2^18 = 8126464 bytes).
It is 8.1 MB and 7.75 MiB.

Andries

Always remember:
(i) k=1000, M=1000k, G=1000M
(ii) specifications are rounded down, so that customers cannot complain
(iii) if something exists only in power-of-two sizes, that helps
guessing the actual size; however, this is not true for disks,
and as this example shows, it is not true for CF cards either.