🚀 go-pugleaf

David Albrecht wrote in a message to All:

>>>>Performance:  ZIP performs closer to the speed of a floppy than a hard
disk.
>>>>
>>>I would disagree with that...  Perhaps you're referring to the
>>>parallel port version.  The SCSI version while definitely no where...

[some test results]

DA> Now the parallel port version may be a whole different story, but
DA> then you aren't comparing the speed of drives anymore...

very true, but...

DA> say that if it is desired to get near the performance that a Zip is
DA> capable of you need a real SCSI adaptor.  This is hardly unique to
DA> the Zip, however, I would also say that in general, devices that
DA> plug into parallel ports will perform poorly compared to those that
DA> use a card that plugs into the machine providing a more
DA> high performance interface.  I have an Trantor MiniSCSI EPP...

however! I took a moment to run a similar test for a non-enhanced-parallel
ZIPdrive, and guess how poor the results turned out to be:

1.236.529 bytes in 8 files, big & small

  TO     TIME(s)
-----------------
zip     : 8.96
floppy  : 64.24 (...)
server  : 3.41 (DX-2/66 using netware 3.12 & ISA ne2000)
(HD     : approx. 0.0)

All these tests were performed using a similar boot: plain DOS with QEMM, of
course no disk caches of any kind. I must admit my AT-bus is a bit over-
clocked running at 11 MHz, but every little speed increase is welcome enough.

I didn't get the chance to check access times and the like, because I would't
know what program I should use to do so (I haven't got EZBench or whatever).
All this amounts to a simple parallel ZIP having a transfer rate of approx. 8.2
Mb/min, or 138 kb/s. Now that's not so impressive, but far above floppy
standards indeed, and not even a maximum since about twice this speed is
possible with enhanced parallel cards etc.

Greetings,

Michai Ramakers,
mic@soft.iwg.nl