>>> With forced writes OFF it takes about 8-9 hours to import a days
>>> data, with them ON it takes 3-4 times as long (which is longer than a day)

.....

> > > Too slow, is the simple answer.
>
> > What is volume of imported data ?
>
> about 200Mb per day

You need about 30 hours to import ONLY 200Mb ???

Then you should upgrade your 80286 :-)

> > How many rows
>
> millions
>
> > how many blobs ?
>
> none
>
> > Any triggers, fk constraints, indexes involved ?
>
> loads

Have you tried to tune the db enough ? Like not count all rows in each trigger :-),
drop fk constraints with low selectivity indexes, and such things ?
(or more nasty tricks like denormalize the tables ...)

Ivan
http://www.volny.cz/iprenosil/interbase