I think it's ECP that has potentially lower CPU utilization via DMA.

bjt wrote:

I think it's ECP that has potentially lower CPU utilization via DMA.

Re-read Wikipedia again, seems like you're right, fixed the original post:

Enhanced Parallel Port (EPP) is a half-duplex bi-directional interface designed to allow devices like printers, scanners, or storage devices to transmit large amounts of data while quickly being able to switch channel direction. EPP can provide up to 2 MByte/s bandwidth, approximately 15 times the speed achieved with normal parallel-port communication with far less CPU overhead.[1]

Extended Capability Port (ECP) is a half-duplex bi-directional interface similar to EPP, except that PC implementations use direct memory access (usually ISA DMA on channel 3) to provide even faster data transfer than EPP by having the ISA DMA hardware and the parallel port interface hardware handle the work of transferring the data instead of letting the CPU do this work. Many devices that interface using this mode support RLE compression. ECP can provide up to 2.5 MByte/s of bandwidth, which is the natural limit of 8-bit ISA DMA.[2] An ECP interface on a PC can improve transfers to pre-IEEE-1284 printers as well, by reducing the CPU load during the transfer ; however, the transfer in that case is unidirectional.

Searching for "ISA ECP EPP" items on ebay shows a few cards that would suit your machine.

lolo799 wrote:

Searching for "ISA ECP EPP" items on ebay shows a few cards that would suit your machine.

Shipping from ebay to Russia would be an overkill for an LPT card, unfortunately. I mean, there are a lot of cards available here for 2-3 dollars a piece (less than the price of ebay shipment), but like I said, sellers do not specify the specs.

Another option would be ISA PCMCIA interface card, it's faster but you would need to buy a CD drive as well, and the memory requirements are often larger...
I guess it depends how much money you're willing to pay for the LPT card in total, as always...

I think any highly integrated (e.g. Winbond) 16-bit multi I/O card will support ECP, just disable the other bits if you don't need them.
A tell-tale would be jumpers to select the LPT DMA channel.

From what I could find, very few if any parallel port drives support ECP in any form. Some do support EPP.
(cribbed from documentation for the linux paride driver: https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/blockdev/paride.txt)

A better option on the longer term might be to go for an ISA (or PCI) SCSI card instead. It'll give much better speed and connectivity options for external drives.