That seems quite a long time for the parallel port, I dont have any machines using the PP now but it certainly wasnt that slow for me when I did.
I made up a brain for my FRO so it will actually feedhold if you wind it to zero and then restart if you wind back up again. Reason I did that is you can never actually set the FRO to zero in Mach at this time, hopefully Rev4 will be different as its one of the things I asked Brian for. At the moment you can slow the FRO way down to 0.1% I think but that means its still creeping along and can catch you out. With the Brain it actually feedholds so you can be sure it is actually stopped. The only drawback is the auto start with winding the pot up requires a fairly slow initial wind of the pot as if wound too fast it will not see the conditions for the restart, however you soon get used to it
and once restarted you can wind the pot as fast as you like the remaining way.
Hood