"Michael Franz" <mvfranz@hotmail.com> writes:
> It seems that only the epson and mustek scanners are supported
> either directly or by treating the scanner as a SCSI device. How do
> I get started with the UMAX scanners?
There are two pieces to using a scanner in Linux. First, the kernel
must be able to communicate with the device. This is rarely a
problem; even with USB scanners. The real problem comes with what
sane calls the "backend". This is the piece that goes between the
actual scanning user interface and the kernel itself. The backend
must know how to control the scanner. This is different than just
talking to the scanner.
Here's the bad news: UMAX doesn't release the command protocol for
controlling their parallel or USB scanners. I have the UMAX 2000U
scanner. The developement kernels (2.3.x) can recognize the scanner,
but sane has no idea what to say to it.
You have two options. First, write a polite letter to UMAX requesting
the scanner control information. This is probably a dead end. I have
been doing this every so often for the last six months. The second is
to reverse engineer the command language. I don't really know how to
do this. I guess you would have to tap into the line (either USB or
parallel cable) and sniff out what commands are sent under what
situations. I think this would be very usefull (to me at least) but
very difficult. Someone much smarter than me can comment on this.
-- Doug Alcorn | Fire Todd Dickinson, reform the US Patent Office doug@lathi.net | http://www.andovernews.com/cgi-bin/news_column.pl?533 www.lathi.net |-- Source code, list archive, and docs: http://www.mostang.com/sane/ To unsubscribe: echo unsubscribe sane-devel | mail majordomo@mostang.com
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