You were lucky to have a Mac with IDE drives in 1998. AFAIK that was only the G3s and some lower-end Performa. I had a 9600 and there was no avoiding SCSI (well, I say that but I did put an IDE card in it at some point).
The true revelation was the B&W G3s. Those machines came from another universe.
we did not have a G3 (we definitely could not afford that). IIRC we had a 6400 or something of that vintage.