[sane-devel] Sheetfed Scanners

[Jack McGill]

Hello,

I am relatively new to linux and have posted a couple of times. I am
interested in the small mobile document scanners, also known as
pass-through or sheetfed scanners. 

I have made a small web page that attempts to summarize the sheetfed
scanners that are available
http://sites.google.com/site/sheetfedscannerslinux/. This is meant to
complement the supported devices section of the Sane webpage.

Also, I have recently purchased several of these on eBay, when I could
get a really good price. I wanted to offer these to the Sane project as
my contribution. If a Sane developer is interested in any of these,
email me and describe your experience developing Sane. I will send you
the scanner and it is yours to keep. You can use it or abuse it however
you see fit. All I ask is that you put a driver into the Sane project
for that device. I will pay for postage. I will try to pay any customs
fees or VAT, but you may have to pay this.

Here is a list of what I have available:

Visioneer Strobe XP 200: This has a GL646 chipset, so it could be
adapted to the genesys backend. It is powered through an external 17
volt power supply. Mine fits North American style sockets.

Visioneer Strobe XP 300: This has a GL842 chip, so it could be adapted
to the genesys backend. It can be powered through the USB cable. It also
can be powered through an external power supply for faster scans. It is
a duplex scanner (scans both sides simultaneously). The scanner that I
have does put a black line down the middle of one of the sides that it
scans, which is probably due to a bad sensor. This should not affect the
ability to develop a driver, but it may decrease the value of the
scanner to you.

Visioneer Strobe Pro: The chip inside appears to be a proprietary
Visioneer chip. A whole new backend would probably have to be written.
The only advantage to going through the trouble of doing this that I can
see is that these scanners are really cheap on ebay. This scanner needs
an external power supply.

Pentax DS Mobile: This is supposedly the same as the syscan Travelscan
Pro 2300. I won a lot of 10 of these on ebay and I expect that at least
one will work. This has a LM9832/3 chip and should be adaptable to the
plustek backend.

Visioneer RoadWarrior: This has a GL842 chip, so it could be adapted to
genesys. I have one of these that I paid full retail price and I am
emotionally attached to it. I could loan it out for a few months, but
I'd like to eventually get it back. Also, someone may already be working
on this device. This device is powered through the USB cable.

Visioneer OneTouch 5800 USB flatbed scanner: I have one of these that I
don't want. It is pretty heavy, so I only want to ship this in the
United States. Realtek RTS8801C chipset.

-- 
Jack McGill