On 27-Oct-00 Michael Papet wrote:
> My name is Michael Papet. I am a Product Manager at Microtek. I'm
> wondering if there is any way I can help you guys port newer
> scanners to Linux. Let me know how I can help.
> My telephone number is 310-297-5000 ext. 5355.
I believe support for Linux and Sane from Microtek is a good thing.
At this moment there is not much development for the microtek
backends.
Bernd Schroeder is/was the maintainer of the microtek2 (scsi2)
backend, but he has not worked on it this year. It's rather unclear if
he will continue maintaining. Karsten Festag is working now to add
support for the Phantom 330.
I would not know in which way you could help him, he might be the one
to tell you that.
You're saying "newer scanners". I guess you mean scsi2 scanners. It
would be nice though if you could do something for the microtek
(scsi1) backend. There is no maintainer anymore for the
microtek backend, the maintainer Matto Marjanovic disappeared last
year.
My Microtek Pagewiz (sheetfed) worked with a modified 0.10 backend on
sane 1.0.1, but i never got it to work (i/o error) with the 0.12
backend on sane 1.0.2. I'm using a microtek2 scanner now, but a lot
of people use microtek(1) scanners, and report problems with them.
I'm sure support on these scanners will be a good thing.
Another thing might be helpfull.
Firmware versions under 1.60 are found buggy with sane. In the past
some people asked Microtek for firmware upgrades. A few months ago,
Harald Finster got the firmware version 1.60.
It woud be a good thing if Microtek made their last version
available, with documentation how to upgrade. Ofcourse upgrading
firmware will be on responsibily of the user, in case things go wrong.
On the website www.torque.net/ppscsi.html there is a kernelpatch for
parport scanners. It has support for the OnSpec 90c26 chipset, used
by microtek parport scanners. It is maintained by Tim Waugh.
It could he needs help in maintaining the onscsi kernelmodule.
It would be a good thing to ask him, if he can use help on that.
I believe it's a good thing to have Microtek support on Linux and
Sane. However, you might need to struggle through some mixed emotions.
Support from Microtek hasn't been great in the past. Support to
end-users has been close to zero. I can't really tell about support
for developers, but i heard about people who requested for
documentation and only got old documentation.
Your support could change this, and benefit us all.
Marcel Pol
--
mpol@gmx.net
ICQ 76013639
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