Yeah but this is purely a tat around, mess about with machine.  I
 don't even want to spend £1 on it let alone £10.  Crikey, I must have
 known Dick Turpin for too long....  It could be fun to actually
 experiment and see how disgustingly slow it is.  Just for the sheer
 novelty of it :-)
 Take care.
 Oh, I've just unearthed a 3.2gb drive now also... 
Kevan,
Firstly, you must have a LOT of free time!!
It does seem somewhat pointless to keep old drives, especially when
you're aiming to play with/benchmark old hardware... it will perform
at its best (and perhaps achieve what you're aiming for) with a new
(i.e. spun for less hours) or modern hard drive.
But if you're really up for some read/write based laughs, start using
old rom chips - they're bound to take forever.
A
-- 
Andrew Edwards