Product: SyQuest SparQ (parallel version; an EIDE version is also available. A USB version was in development, but may not appear due to the fact that the company entered bankruptcy in Nov. '98. See the bottom of this article for additional details.)
For: Windows 3.1 or higher, Windows 95/98, Windows NT 4.0
Price: C$299 (EIDE version also available)
Pros: inexpensive and portable external removable storage unit with 1GB media for not much more than the cost of a 100MB Zip drive. Supported by most OSes.
Cons: May cause compatibility problems with printers or other parallel-port devices. May encounter problems when using Windows 98's "Web View" mode to examine "My Computer." SparQ disc occasionally would not seat in drive correctly and would not subsequently mount or eject. SyQuest's financial troubles suggest that future product support may be limited (at best).
Strongest Competitors: Iomega Jaz; Iomega Zip; SyQuest SyJet; CD-RW, other external (SCSI or parallel) storage devices.
As we wrote in our review of the EIDE version of the SparQ drive, this product has its enticements -- and its problems. In fact, our review of the EIDE SparQ produced more feedback, praise and reader interest than nearly any story we've written this year. However, our experience with the parallel version of the drive was worse than with the EIDE drive -- to a point where we'll give the parallel SparQ a hearty Thumbs Down to Windows 98 users. Windows 95 users, particularly those with no other devices on the parallel port they intend to use with the drive, may have better luck.
The external parallel drive should certainly be more convenient to install than an internal IDE (hard disk-type) device, but in fact, we encountered so many hassles that its claimed ease quickly began to sound like empty marketing hyperbole. First of all, we found that the drive as shipped with a 10/97 driver, wasn't compatible with Windows 98. A driver update (1/98) on the SyQuest website promised to fix this problem, but didn't. A lot of searching turned up a newer driver (3/98) on the website of Shuttle, the company that manufactures the parallel interface the drive uses to interface to the computer. (A webpage can help determine which driver you should use.) However, this driver, while better than the others, still didn't solve all our problems. Mysteriously, we found that the drive worked fine on systems with DOS, Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 installed, but as soon as Windows 98 was installed, with its "Web View" feature enabled, the drive would freeze the entire system. Many, many reboots later, we discovered that if "Web View" is turned off for the "My Computer" window (where the system's drives are displayed), it worked fine.
When we hooked up our Hewlett-Packard DeskJet 660C printer to the pass-thru port on the back of the SparQ, however, a second problem reared its ugly head. Every time we rebooted our system, the printer would grab a piece of paper and print a line of garbage on it, then fail with an error condition. Nice. It did this with HP's driver, and both of the 660C drivers supplied by Windows 98. We tried setting our BIOS' parallel port settings to EPP, ECP, bi-directional, and compatible -- all to no avail. We eventually set it back to ECP and resigned ourselves to a lifetime of printer hassles. (Alternatively, you could perform a similar bit of surgery to the procedure we describe in the article entitled Modify Your LS-120. The SparQ, like the LS-120, is an IDE drive with an IDE-to-parallel converter; the exact same procedure should work on either unit. Standard disclaimers apply, of course.)
And then we got smart. Searching for the terms "sparq" and "problem" produced a whopping 14430 matches in Altavista. Yikes. One dealer we spoke to said his store has an 80 to 90 percent return rate on SparQ drives. Not surprisingly, a lot of the messages on the Internet and Usenet would seem to corroborate these claims. We returned the drive to the store where we bought it. Meanwhile, our in-office test unit died completely. The end.
Until SyQuest closed its doors, we held out some hope that the forthcoming Universal Serial Bus version of the SparQ, due in Nov. 98, might have finally provided the interface that would allow this low-cost, high-capacity media to shine. USB, more than parallel and certainly more than EIDE, is intended "not for nerds only." Now, alas, the SparQ is a discount-bin candidate. Caveat Emptor.
For Further Reading:
Jan. '99 update:
As noted above, our test unit died completely shortly after this review was written.