Re: Microtek ScanMaker 330

Rogier Wolff (R.E.Wolff@BitWizard.nl)
Tue, 10 Mar 1998 11:04:24 +0100 (MET)

Matto Marjanovic wrote:

> It seems to follow some kind of SCSI-II standard. I don't know how
> similar it is to the command sets of other brands of new scanners,
> but perhaps one generic SCSI-II scanner backend will be possible.
> We can dream, no?

The SCSI-II standard about scanners is sufficiently vague that you
cannot build a scanner solely on the specs.

I mean that a disk drive implements a well-defined "read" and "write",
and that's sufficient for a functional disk drive. The amount of
commands that a scanner needs to support to be able to function is
much larger, but the specs leave enough "vague" that a manufacturer
almost always needs to do essential stuff in "vendor extentions".

Tamarack sent me their interpretation of the SCSI-II specs. I was able
to build the Tamarack backend on that. Getting access to the SCSI-II
specs and noting the similarity, I wasn't able to get the coolscan to
work with the tamarack driver. (I didn't put in very much time though).

A general SCSI-II standard driver would need:

- A "standard" way to approach a scanner, adhering to SCSI-II/scanner
as close as possible.

- A config file that specifies at what points this scanner is
"different"from the standard: Specifying extra required commands at
certain points, and ways to extract information like "bytes per
line" from the replies.

It is not a trivial task to create such a backend.

Roger.

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