ferdie@coyote.datalog.com (fred jarvis) (03/12/91)
Does anyone have any experience with an external hard drive running off the parallel (or serial) port of a PC clone? I have a dual-floppy NEC Multispeed I'm trying to keep from obsolescence. AXONIX among others makes such a device. I'm especially interested in reliability, cost, compatibility, what kind of software is supplied (device driver?)...
ih@udel.edu (Charlie Ih) (03/13/91)
In article <ZoToy1w163w@coyote.datalog.com> ferdie@coyote.datalog.com (fred jarvis) writes: >Does anyone have any experience with an external hard drive >running off the parallel (or serial) port of a PC clone? ........ I'm also interested. In addition to reliability, I am more concerned about the speed. Some software vendors claim that 50 kbyte/s can be transitted through the parallel port (20 k through serial port). However, in reality, the actual speed is much lower, 1/2, 1/3 or even lower. At 50 kbytes/s, 1 M takes 20 seconds. Can anyone tell us the realistic transfer speed of the external hard drives, in other words what can we expect? I am really concerned about the reliability of the removable HD. Can anyone tell us more about it?
jeff@eng.umd.edu (Jeffrey Frey) (03/14/91)
Yet another advantage of the PC-Convertible is that if you get the right external hard drive (somebody's "quick Brick", advertised in Computer Shopper) it will run off the computer's expansion slot with regular hard-drive R/W speeds. Mine seems faster than the Seagate on my 9MHz AT, in fact. Drives hooking to the parallel port have to operate at the port's speed--96K? Jeff