Re: Microtek scanners

Warren Early (earlyw@sphinx-group.com)
Tue, 16 Mar 1999 11:39:27 -0800

As with most scanner manufacturers these days Microtek pays as little for
tech support people as possible. Most Linux (Unix) users are technologically
adept and therefore out of the price range of what Microtek's Tech Support
is willing to pay so therefore there are no current employees at Microtek
(that I'm aware of) that are (Linux) Unix users. The programmers there are
interested in Mac and PC only because that's what pays the bills. I
personally know some people within the company so sometimes I can get them
to cough up some documentation. I've forwarded this conversation thread to
them so maybe they can be shamed into providing what's needed. ;-)

-----Original Message-----
From: Bernd Schroeder <bernd@aquila.muc.de>
To: 'sane-devel@mostang.com' <sane-devel@mostang.com>
Date: Monday, March 15, 1999 3:50 PM
Subject: Re: Microtek scanners

>On Fri, Mar 12, 1999 at 04:19:43PM +0100, Leon van Zundert wrote:
>> Dear Sir/Madam,
>>
>> We have quite a few customers asking for Linux drivers.
>>
>> Could you tell us which scanners are supported by S.A.N.E., so we don't
>> get any dissapointet customers after sending them to your homepage.
>
>Basically you can find a list of supported scanners on the sane webserver.
>With sane-1.00 (microtek2 backend v0.5) the X6EL is working, too, but is
>missing on this list, because it was unclear, whether it would work, when
>this version was released. Ditto V300. In the meanwhile it has been
>reported, that the V600 works with this version, too.
>
>There exists a major problem with most models with 36-bit color depth:
>After one successful color scan subsequent scans produce a corrupted image
>(looks somehow like random noise scattered over the image). For FW-version
>1.0 of the devices the backend v0.5 has a workaround, but devices with a
newer
>FW-version need to be patched to apply the workaround.
>
>For some models I have no information, whether they work, whereas some
>other probably work, if only a check for the model code is added to
>the backend (notably the Scanmaker 336).
>
>These are all SCSI models.
>
>A pre0.6 release of the backend exists on
>
> ftp://ftp.muc.de/people/bernds/mtek2/microtek2-pre0.6.120399.tar.gz .
>
>This version includes the workaround mentioned above for all FW-versions
>known to me. This version also knows about the 9600XL.
>
>However, some people have reported that under some circumstances the
>colors are wrong with an older pre0.6 release, and I don't know yet,
whether
>this newer version fixes this.
>
>> Does S.A.N.E. also support parallel and USB scanners?
>
>As for the those models with a SCSI to parallelport adapter:
>According to an information from the the Linux parport mailing list and
>a link on the parport web server these devices have a builtin
>OnSpec90C26 chip. If the communication protocol between the device and the
>host is the same as for the pure SCSI models, these models should work
>once a generic parport driver is available. Maybe you can confirm,
>that they have this chip.
>
>Maybe the same is true for USB scanners, but at present USB is not
supported.
>
>The Slimscan and Phantom<insert a number here>cx series will probably never
>be supported by the microtek2 backend. I asked Microtek in Taiwan for the
>documentation some months ago, and they told me that they don't have any
>documentation. In addition these models use a different technology and
hence
>probably a rather different protocol.
>
>Basically the backend is written rather generic, so that all models
>to which the documentation of the SCSI command set applies, should
>work. However, during the development of the backend I have noticed that
>a number of models violate the spec in this respect or have some other
>oddities, which makes it often time consuming or impossible to figure
>out workarounds or how it really works.
>
>Examples are the mentioned corrupted images or the "two-many-bytes-per-
>scanline" problem discussed some days ago on this list.
>
>It would be very helpful if Microtek could give some support to solve
>these kinds of problems (maybe you can arrange for such a help). The fact
>that Microtek (and probably other manufacturers) get questions regarding
>Linux drivers is a clear indication for its growing importance.
>
>Bernd
>
>--
>Bernd Schroeder
>Email: mailto:bernd@aquila.muc.de
>PGP public key available: mailto:pgp@aquila.muc.de | Subject: send key
>
>--
>Source code, list archive, and docs: http://www.mostang.com/sane/
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>

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