Has anyone seen such a thing? Basically I'm looking for an empty box with a parallel port adapter outside, and an IDE connector insided. I honestly thought such things had become fairly abundant recently (haven't I seen ads saying things like, "don't throw your old HDD out, turned it into a portable," etc.?) ... but having just searched for them I'm starting to think that maybe I imagined them. I see a few USB options, but nothing via parallel.
Parallel port hard disk adapters
- Thread starter i
- Start date
Yes they exist, here's an example http://www.amtrade.com/pc/ide_portable_box.htm
For more examples do an internet search with parallel,port, and ide as the search words with your favorite internet search engine.
For more examples do an internet search with parallel,port, and ide as the search words with your favorite internet search engine.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
I have one. They're extremely limited. Hope you're fond of low PIO-mode transfers, for one thing, and you pretty much need to carry around a driver installation floppy everywhere you take the thing (basically, you install a SCSI driver and a device-specific driver).
Reliability is pretty good, but considering how slow those things are, they'd better be.
I keep a CD-ROM drive in mine. I have had a hard disk installed in it. I decided that, any time I needed portable storage, it'd be easier to just open the machine and pop in an extra drive.
I think USB2.0 is probably the best bet around now. It's backwards compatible with the ports that are on the back of every machine made in the last three years, and you can get pretty decent transfer rates with the simple addition of a $20 card or a new motherboard.
Reliability is pretty good, but considering how slow those things are, they'd better be.
I keep a CD-ROM drive in mine. I have had a hard disk installed in it. I decided that, any time I needed portable storage, it'd be easier to just open the machine and pop in an extra drive.
I think USB2.0 is probably the best bet around now. It's backwards compatible with the ports that are on the back of every machine made in the last three years, and you can get pretty decent transfer rates with the simple addition of a $20 card or a new motherboard.
> low PIO-mode transfers ... need to carry around a driver installation
> floppy everywhere ... you install a SCSI driver and a device-specific
> drive
That's ok. My 5 year-old parallel port Zip drive has given me a lot experience - and patience - in that area.
I think I should elaborate on the situation that's prompting me to ask about this.
I just inherited an IBM Thinkpad 560 notebook. It's old. It's limited. But I kind of like it (especially as it's the first laptop I've ever owned).
It has a weird proprietary external floppy drive, that connects to a weird proprietary connector, via a weird proprietary cable. Aside from the internal hard disk, that floppy drive is the ONLY storage/boot medium this laptop supports (so far as I know). There's no support or capacity for an internal CD-ROM drive. There are no USB ports.
I would like to replace the aged Windows 95 install that's on there with something else, BUT ... because of the limited hardware this thing has, whatever OS I choose I'll have to install it all from floppy. I'd rather not have to do that. I'd prefer to find a way to boot off the floppy drive, load a driver for the NNN, and then continue the install from the NNN (where NNN is some kind of large-capacity device connected via the parallel port).
Then again, I'm not sure what success I'd have if I tried to install a Linux distribution via this method - that's something else to think about.
Any suggestions?
> floppy everywhere ... you install a SCSI driver and a device-specific
> drive
That's ok. My 5 year-old parallel port Zip drive has given me a lot experience - and patience - in that area.
I think I should elaborate on the situation that's prompting me to ask about this.
I just inherited an IBM Thinkpad 560 notebook. It's old. It's limited. But I kind of like it (especially as it's the first laptop I've ever owned).
It has a weird proprietary external floppy drive, that connects to a weird proprietary connector, via a weird proprietary cable. Aside from the internal hard disk, that floppy drive is the ONLY storage/boot medium this laptop supports (so far as I know). There's no support or capacity for an internal CD-ROM drive. There are no USB ports.
I would like to replace the aged Windows 95 install that's on there with something else, BUT ... because of the limited hardware this thing has, whatever OS I choose I'll have to install it all from floppy. I'd rather not have to do that. I'd prefer to find a way to boot off the floppy drive, load a driver for the NNN, and then continue the install from the NNN (where NNN is some kind of large-capacity device connected via the parallel port).
Then again, I'm not sure what success I'd have if I tried to install a Linux distribution via this method - that's something else to think about.
Any suggestions?
Tannin
Storage? I am Storage!
They are reasonably common on the market, i. They seem to work fine, though as Mercutio says, not exatly lightning fast by today's standards. We used to use Backpack drives a lot - www.microsolutions.com - but it's better these days to use a simple external box like Mercutio's as you can fit any standard hard drive or CD-ROM to it. Even a burner if you like, but you'll be limited to about 2 speed write.