cyclone3d wrote on 2021-11-12, 15:31:

red-ray wrote on 2021-11-12, 12:42:

Errius wrote on 2021-11-12, 11:41:

Drives use megabytes

The Windows Properties panel reports my 255,266,258,560 byte drive as 237 MB rather than 255 MB, all in all it's a mess!

Drives are sold with the labeling of MB/GB/TB, hen in fact they are not. Then you also lose some space due to formatting.

If you look at the super fine print on the packaging, they state that they count a MB as 1,000,000 bytes instead of 1,048,576 bytes. All the mfgs should be sued for false advertising.

So you truly are the Big Rooster.

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-11-12, 15:31:

Drives are sold with the labeling of MB/GB/TB, hen in fact they are not. Then you also lose some space due to formatting.

If you look at the super fine print on the packaging, they state that they count a MB as 1,000,000 bytes instead of 1,048,576 bytes. All the mfgs should be sued for false advertising.

This is incorrect and/or misleading, check such as https://www.majordifferences.com/2018/03/diff … gabyte-and.html to confirm it's the case.

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-11-12, 15:31:

If you look at the super fine print on the packaging, they state that they count a MB as 1,000,000 bytes instead of 1,048,576 bytes. All the mfgs should be sued for false advertising.

If memory serves me, then some manufacturers also made the wonderful calculation of 1Gigabyte being 1048576000 😀 🤣
ie 1000 x 1024 x 1024
the good old days when such conversations about which was the correct number... meh
Giga Mega and Kilo are all defined as multiples of ten.
The fact that byte is added only matters to fanatical IT folks and bloody rotten marketing wankers.

retardware wrote on 2021-11-12, 15:39:

red-ray wrote on 2021-11-12, 12:42:

all in all it's a mess!

Yes, even in Windows 10 you get strange values.
I guess this is from incorrectly converting forth and back with wrong factors several times.

255,266,258,560 Bytes converts to 237.7352291345596 Megabytes.

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-11-12, 16:37:

255,266,258,560 Bytes converts to 237.7352291345596 Megabytes.

Incorrect again, 255,266,258,560 Bytes converts to 237.7352291345596 Mebibytes.

Apple just got rid of this nonsense some years ago and uses decimal disk sizes. Much easier to do calculations too.

red-ray wrote on 2021-11-12, 16:43:

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-11-12, 16:37:

255,266,258,560 Bytes converts to 237.7352291345596 Megabytes.

Incorrect again, 255,266,258,560 Bytes converts to 237.7352291345596 Mebibytes.

Gotcha.

It would be very interesting to see where the confusion started and who started it.

In that link, it states that MB can either be used for 1000 or 1024KB. Who thought that was a good idea?

Looks like up to 1998 there was no distinction and everything was MB.

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-11-12, 17:13:

It would be very interesting to see where the confusion started and who started it.

As far as I can remember, this was used by HDD manufacturers to blow up the megabyte count.
To solve the question one would have to find out when disks started to be advertised in "megabyte" capacity and then check when they started to count the millions instead of the 2^20....

Bytes are useful for programmers. (At least in 8/16/32/64 bit architectures. 6/12/24 bit systems use 6-bit bytes instead.)

Does the end user need to use bytes at all though? On user-facing interfaces why not just reckon everything in bits?

Errius wrote on 2021-11-12, 22:18:

Bytes are useful for programmers. (At least in 8/16/32/64 bit architectures. 6/12/24 bit systems use 6-bit bytes instead.)

Does the end user need to use bytes at all though? On user-facing interfaces why not just reckon everything in bits?

The only thing the end users needs to know is when the diskspace is full, and preferably, that is a situation that never should arise !

retardware wrote on 2021-11-12, 17:26:

To solve the question one would have to find out when disks started to be advertised in "megabyte" capacity and then check when they started to count the millions instead of the 2^20....

The DEC RM03 which is 1977 vintage was quoted as 67 MB, but are actually 64 MiB so it's a long time ago.

Some old systems reckoned memory in words, but you don't see that anymore. On modern systems a word would be 8 bytes.

Another unit you rarely see nowadays is the nybble. This is 4-bits, and again is useful for programmers because it can be used to represent a single hexadecimal digit.

A word means the machine native bit width, so a word would be 64 bits now, and in DOS days was 16 bits. 8 bits = word was only for 8 bits.