very slow Iomega parallel Zip 100 drive

[Cruez]

I had the drive on an old 486 Win95 machine and it ran great. I put it on my Athlon Tbird 750, Win98 machine and it is extremely slow. The CPU goes up to 100% usage, the mouse jumps around and just slows the entire system down terribly. Does anyone know of the correct settings for this thing?..I have the newest drivers installed for it....

[scoots987]

I feel your pain. I just threw some money at the problem(I bought an IDE Zip drive) and the problem went away. I use the parallel drive when I am desperate on another computer or a clients PC.

Sorry I couldn't be of more use, but another IDE Zip drive is only $40(I have seen).

Scoots987

[Axel]

live through the pain - pull anything off zip disk that you still want - and then ebay away your zip drive -

I'm thinking about doing that myself - I just don't see the point of zip drives any more - not with CD-burners in the picture - and if you really want to go nuts - you can get a DVD - ROM burner for around $1600.00 - 4.7GB per disk -

and I spent so much time making a beautiful case for mine out of an ammo can - water-proof and all - and I'll probably sell it off for peanuts -

Bought mine in 1996 when I needed to take files home from work -

[NDD]

Try to enable EPP/ECP mode for LPT1 in BIOS, it should increase transfer speeds and solve the CPU overloading issue.

Best Regards ...

[NDC]

Also try running Parallel Port Accelerator which selects the best connection possible... It's in the Zip application folder....

[Cruez]

Yup ive tried all those....the only reason I use it is to transfer stuff to another pc with an IDE zip drive....oh well.....

[cadetstimpy]

Iomega ZIP parrallel runs fastest in EPP 1.9

[Mr.Goodbytes]

That other machine with an IDE zip drive wouldn't happen to be networked to this one would it? If so, share it!!!

[Cruez]

Well, It was networked with it....no need for it then, but I had a cable modem attached now and I lost that NIC for that purpose....I think I'll just do buy another NIC and put the network back together...faster anyway.... :)

[DanU]

This is going to sound counterintuitive.... Have you tried slowing down your parallel port? Try putting your port in SPP mode.

I had a similar problem once with my parallel LS120 drive. It worked great with an older pentium system, but it coughed and wheezed with a newer P2 system. I put the P2 system to SPP mode and the problems went away. I think it was due to a problem with the ECP/EPP drivers and the faster speed of the P2, maybe some timing loops got thrown off. With the parallel port in SPP mode, it was somewhat slower, but not terribly so.