I remain convinced that USB, not parallel, is the "right" way to go for interfacing a Universal Floppy Disk controller. The whole purpose of the device is to be a "bridge" between old and new. The "old" side is fixed, it's the drives we want to interface to. But the new side is "today's PCs", only "today" really doesn't mean "today" but really today and tomorrow. Parallel and serial ports are disappearing RIGHT NOW. Some new PCs -- most new notebooks -- already don't have them (and yes, I might want to use this with a notebook). It's 2005 now, and we are talking about designing a device that doesn't exist yet. What about 2008, 2009 ..... even 2015? USB interfaces essentially "started" in about 2003 and in my view will likely exist for about as long as RS-232 devices existed, e.g. decades. Why? What was RS-232 used in? Electronic equipment, LOTS of it, but almost NO consumer equipment. What is USB used in? Electronic equipment, lots of it. AND ... Digital Cameras, MP3 players, cell phones, GPS receivers .... the list is endless. USB is both just starting, and so completely ubiquitous (and, very importantly, in BOTH "lab" equipment AND "consumer" equipment) that it's going to be around for decades to come. Parallel port? The primary use has always been printers. But you can't even find a printer with a parallel port easily, and parallel ports in PCs are already starting to disappear. This is a device that we want to be useful now and in the future, and I firmly believe that any serious analysis will conclude that USB is the way to go. [Someone questioned if the speed was adequate. USB 1.x is 12 megabits per second, USB 2.x is 480 megabits per second. The target devices are floppy disk drives, to which the maximum write bitrate is 1 megabit per second. Clearly USB 2 can do absolutely anything that would be relevent, and there's not much, if anything, that USB 1 couldn't do.]