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On Sun, 21 Sep 1997 17:01:18 -0700 (PDT), Steve Parker wrote: >On Sun, 21 Sep 1997, Paul Khoury wrote: >> >I've contemplated just running an external 3.5 gig hard drive, via parallel >> >port. Anyone doing so already? >> >> And for anyone who is doing that, or running other parallel port >> devices, are they really slow? I would only expect 8-bit speed, as >> the parallel port is only 8 bit anyways. > > I have a 1GB Quantum fireball 1080 [one of the fastest 1GB drives ever] How fast, how much cache, and most importantly, SCSI or (I would guess) EIDE? The drive I would like to use is a Quantum Prodrive LPS525s, but because it is a SCSI-2 device, I would need to fork out almost $200 for a decent SCSI-2 PCMCIA card to benefit from the 10.8ms and 512K cache. Right now it's on an Ultra Wide card in my server. >stuck in an external parallel port case. I can get about 670K/sec >throughput, *but* my TP560-120 can barely do anything else while that is >going on. It is so slow it hurts. Really hurts. The parallel interface >manufacturer claims the interface can do up to 700K/sec, so I am basically >right at the limit. Maybe their test machine was a Pentium II 233MHz or something. Right now, I just do things the cheap way - with a Laplink cable from OS/2's "Boot from Drive A:" option. I'd say that it takes about 18-20 seconds to copy a 1.5MB file from my 701's HD to the Quantum drive. If I slow down my parallel port the CPU load goes >down, but so does the throughput. > What is the setting of your parallel port (SPP, ECP, EPP)? >> Also, does anyone know if these devices are compatible with higher >> end OSes such as OS/2 and various unixes? > > My case/parallel adapter supports Windows/DOS/Win95 and OS/2. The case >was $45 or so, so I can live with its shortcomings. > >============================================================================ >==== Steve Parker ==== San Luis Obispo, CA ==== Multi-OS & Multitasking ==== >============================================================================ > > Later, Paul