>
> 2) UMAX Astra 1200S or 1220S
>
> This model has had extremly poor support from the US support
> office lately and the company apparently initially lied about a current
> problem with the ROM. US office has decided not to fix it
> UK office is shipping upgrade roms or replacing it if you
> ship scanner.
>
don't know , haven't used the support ...
> Q: I believe I understand that the ROM is only an issue
> if you upgrade to a newer version of their TWAIN drivers
> or other shipped software. Am I correct? I am a bit fuzzy
> on this. The problem is that bw scans stop working apparently
> and this makes it useless for OCR unless you buy color OCR software.
>
I haven't used it in B/W so far , nor did i use it under win95 (it is
not even properly installed under win 95..)
and i haven't tried OCR
> Q: Confirm: The card it ships with is 25 pin SCSI so I will need some convertors
>
i confim .
> Q: Comes with SCSI terminator? Needs one? Built-in?
>
there is one in the box ( works fine so far)
> Other drawbacks/inconveniences:
> - No on/off switch
the lamps switch off by themself afer say ten mn of inactivity .
> - lid hinge may snap if raised to too great an angle
(with the transparency adapter , the hinge is a lot more sturdy (metal)
> - bad docs but good web troubleshooting guide
yes bad docs !!!
> - lock/unlock switch needs to be in middle for proper operation
>
( not on mine ...)
>
>
> 3) Mustek
>
Hi Jeffrey
I have bought a UMax 1220s with transparency adapter two weeks ago .
here is my experience so far .
i wanted a scanner that could scan slides (about 50 % of my scans are
going to be slides ) , and i wanted it to work under linux .
I shortlisted the Umax and mustek scanners 'cause their sane backend
seemed to have been the longest around.(they were rated beta)
plus the Umax 1220s was rated "all ok" for most operations.
I actually went for the umax 1220s 'cause the transparency adapter
looked a lot more sturdy than the mustek one . the mustek transparency
adapter is a separate flimsy /cheapy piece of hardware . that has to
be pressed against the scanner. it has a manual switch for the lamp.
the UMAX tranparency adapter lamp is commanded via the scsi interface .
so anyway the umax 1220s comes with a UDS-is11 SCSI card . This is
apparently a cheap card that is not supported by linux . you can
basicaly throw it away ..
so i bought a Tekram DC390 scsci card .
+ a 25 pin to 50 flat pin SCSI cable .
scsi :
i use the generic AMC53C974 driver . it works fine so far
i tried the tekram dc390 driver with and without the tekram patches .
i got troubles as announced in the sane docs : it did hang one out of
two scans an the scans were eeeeexxxtrreeeeeeemmlyyyyyy slooowwww...
if they did terminate at all.
test with version 0.74: (tested with xscanimage)
scan of opaque documents works fine .
slides come out much too dark .
gamma correction does not work , and hang the scsi bus .
Resolution above 600dpi makes the lamp go too far (bad noises!!!),one
out of two times .One has to unplug the scanner quickly !!!
test with version 1.0 (tested with xscanimage)
I am quite pleased with this version . thanks to Oliver Rauch . Great
work !!
slides are still too dark with the standard gamma table , but this can
be corrected by using a custom gamma table (the option now works !!)
the "above 600dpi" bug seems to have disapeared !!
I have so far scanned about 60 slides , without trouble (no crash , no
hang).
The use of xscanimage as a gimp plug-in is quite handy !!
this is far from a thorough test , but
so far , too me , the combination umax 1220s / Sane is fairly usable .
-- ************************************************ Bruno grasland
grasland@club-internet.fr ************************************************ C'est comme partout , ca depend ou tu va.. ************************************************
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