On Thu, 22 Feb 2001, Pablo Manalastas wrote:
..
> I bought the ZIP100 drive which connects to the parallel port,
> and after using it for some time, I discovered that an internal
> ZIP100 version that connects to the IDE controller is available
> and is many times faster. The latter is very highly recommended.
> I bought the former thinking that I just need to bring the unit
> with me wherever I go. But the trouble of connecting, disconnecting
> carrying, making sure that the driver is available on the connected
> machine - these are just too much trouble and too much sacrifice
> for such sluggish performance. Get the IDE version and just ZIP away!
The IDE version is much cheaper, too.
But I have the parallel (imm) version, which is actually a multimode
SCSI/parallel -- so you can get a SCSI card with DB-25 out (usually these
are for scanners) and connect it.
That said, I use the imm as a module, so to connect the drive, I just
attach it, do a "modprobe imm" and it's there. When I go home, "rmmod
imm" (after unmounting) and take the drive off. If you enable ECP or EPP
in your BIOS and kernel, transfer rates are MUCH higher (about 5X the
speed or plain old parallel transfers) which makes it much easier to
swallow.
Also, the standard (non-ECP non-EPP) parallel port does NOT use
interrupts, so the kernel has to poll.. which eats CPU cycles. So your PC
gets sluggish during big transfers. So: enable ECP or EPP, and enable an
IRQ in /proc/parport/X.
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