On a sunny day (Wed, 29 Sep 2010 20:05:46 -0400) it happened Jamie
t wrote in
:

And why would that be? In this case, a parallel port moves 8 bits at a
time compared with 1 for USB. The drive can cache as much as it wants
and in a flat out race, USB would always loose.

It's all about marketing.. Saving copper etc...

Not exactly, apart from the par port being 8 MHz only,
it would be very difficult to do high speed in a multipair screened cable.
Screened, with about 16 lines, makes a big fat cable, with many pF
capacitance between pairs and signal and ground.
100 KHz would be next to impossible over more then 1 meter.
(and that would be only 800 kB / s), less if you count control sequences.
I have a very old, very good webcam that uses the parport, 3 fps is the maximum for a
uncompressed 320x280 frame.


It's easy to convince people that a good method is not
good by simply not implementing a faster version of it and
instead, make a single wire system that uses less material and
say it's better technology..

This is true, but does not apply to the par port idea.
That is why we have USB and firewire.
Also why we have PCIE, serial links win at high speed.
Not to mention composite video over 50 Ohms coax, and what not.


Sheep and lambs. what a herding., that's it!

Yea, but you forget market forces.
Else we would still be using ISA....

Just imagine my 1TB external Seagate connected with a huge fat parallel cable...
About as thick as that screened parallel IDE one.
Not very practical.