[sane-devel] Scanner Question

[Major A]

> I permitted to use my scanner to Andr=E1s Major, the SANE coolscan2 dri=
ver
> author, but he said that this scanner is enough different from Coolscan
> LS 40, so probably a new SANE backend will not be available very
> shortly. Archives of this list includes some recent messages about
> peoples actually working on it.

I tried to hack the driver to support the LS-50 and LS-5000, but never
got it to work. That was probably also because I don't have much time
to work on SANE right now. I have the specs from Nikon, but they give
very little information about what in the way SANE talks to the
scanners is wrong. It appears that the basic protocol is the same as
the LS-40 and LS-4000, but the new scanners appear to be more picky
about the exact way the commands are sent.

> The only problem I see is that this scanner, while really good, isn't
> fast. I do not have other scanners to compare it, but I wait 3.5 minute=
s
> for each 35mm image, at 4000dpi 24bit. This is on a powerbook that only
> have USB1.1. It may be different with USB2.0, but I don't think so sinc=
e
> powerbook CPU goes to 100% during the whole scan.

I think the port speed will make a huge difference.

What needs to be done about the LS-50/5000 is that someone has to take
a good look at the USB log of a Windows driver (or VueScan) and
compare it to that of SANE. I haven't got a time to do this, I'm
afraid (I tried, but gave up after I failed to find anything
obvious). In any case, the LS-40/4000 is pretty well supported by
SANE, any shortcomings in the latter can be fixed fairly easily
because that's the model I have myself.

  Andras