Do you not have SCSI in your seemingly top-of-the-line machine? With that 300mz cruncher in there, it is almost a crime not to have the fastest interface possible for your peripherals. SCSI is much, much faster than Parallel. I don't know how much exactly a SCSI card is, because I have a Mac (Macs have built in SCSI for 10 years! Ha!).
Ah, and there's the problem with the Sparq drive. It did not, does not, and will not have a SCSI interface. Outside of the parallel port interface (slow!), there's no provision for an external Sparq. Sadly, the PC IDE interface was never meant to be brought out of the machine.
Once in a while, you see "external IDE devices" (CD-ROM and Hard drives) or conversion kits to make one's IDE devices be external. What they are doing, really, is the same: converting the device to use the parallel port.
SCSI cards on PC's are much cheaper these days. For those who want adequate performance on a home PC, they can be had for as little as $40.
Joseph |
