SCSI Scanners and Hell on Earth!

[bobber205]

The topic is indeed correct my friends. I have now spent a total of 6.5 hours trying to install a scanner. I am not kidding.

But first, a few disclaimers. While I am not a Windows expert (do those exist?), I know the general troubleshooting steps. I've pulled things out of my *** before, but I can't this time.

Here's the problem. I work in my college's library and a machine the front desk used is painfully slow. I would rather be stabbed than watch it try to start up for 15 minutes. (Again, not exaggerating. I've timed it several times). It's a pentium III behemoth (lol) operating at an amazing 867 mhz. 😱 It's very slow to put it simply. They're been wanting a new computer for awhile. So we got them a refurd, an Xeon 2.66 baby. Fast.

My boss knew this might be a problem so we tried to head it off at the pass by taking the SCSI card out of that old POS and putting it in the new one.

After awhile, we finally got Windows to recognize it, or at least we thought so. Turned out it was for quite a while, I was just being stupid. 🙂

Here's the rundown of what has happened.
I've tried 12 different drivers, some TWAIN, some not TWAIN, with absolutely no luck. It's handy that we are trying to get a ScanPartner 620c (very old and discontinued scanner) to work </sarcasm>. The SCSI port is coming up in Device Manager. We disabled the onboard one just to be safe.

I've painfully booted up the older one and took account of everything that it is using that currently is "working". Fijiustu 7.3 (32-32) TWAIN drivers are what it's using. I've tried those on this new machine and while the driver comes up in Device Manager (at 0.0 megs, same as the old machine), no scanning program can "find" that driver and use it. I've tried the new ones (somewhere in the 9's) and they never come up in Device Manager and no program can find them too.

Oh, and I've tried the ones on the CD. Nope.

I'm at a complete and udder loss at what to do right now.
Could this be a software/hardware issue?
What do I do? :chomp: 😕

 

[Nothinman]

I would rather be stabbed than watch it try to start up for 15 minutes. (Again, not exaggerating. I've timed it several times). It's a pentium III behemoth (lol) operating at an amazing 867 mhz. 😱 It's very slow to put it simply. They're been wanting a new computer for awhile. So we got them a refurd, an Xeon 2.66 baby. Fast.

Well first off the CPU speed shouldn't be a big issue for bootup, I've used plenty of PIIIs at work and for non-game stuff (and even some game stuff) they were fine. The fact that it takes that long to boot is a pure software issue.

I've tried 12 different drivers, some TWAIN, some not TWAIN, with absolutely no luck. It's handy that we are trying to get a ScanPartner 620c (very old and discontinued scanner) to work </sarcasm>. The SCSI port is coming up in Device Manager. We disabled the onboard one just to be safe.

Depending on the SCSI card the scanner will likely have to be completely powered up before the PC is booted so that the SCSI card can find it when it scans it's LUNs. Does the card have a BIOS that you can get into to see if the scanner is detected? The main problem with older SCSI devices is termination so make sure everything is terminated properly.

 

[bobber205]

Thanks for the reply.

In Device Manager, both my SCSI controller appears and the Scanner appears. When I click on the scanner, it doesn't have any "Driver" files. But when I check the same thing on the PC that works, it says the same thing.

As for the Pentium III, I just used the processor's age as a way to illustrate how old the computer is. 🙂

 

[Nothinman]

In Device Manager, both my SCSI controller appears and the Scanner appears. When I click on the scanner, it doesn't have any "Driver" files. But when I check the same thing on the PC that works, it says the same thing.

Well if it's showing up in device mangler then it's almost definitely a software problem. If it were me I'd grab a Linux LiveCD like Knoppix and try that, I believe it has xsane on the disc so you should be able to boot from it and see if the scanner works without any trouble.

As for the Pentium III, I just used the processor's age as a way to illustrate how old the computer is.

Which is irrelevant to you problems though.

 

[wwswimming]

does the scanner have 2 SCSI connectors ? for example, one to connect to the SCSI chain
originating in the computer, and another to continue the SCSI chain ? that's the case with
my hp 4P scanner, also SCSI. it wasn't quite the setup nightmare that you're describing ...
but it did need to be terminated.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=HPQ

there's a link there for the HP stock message board. not a bad place to ask for tech
help with HP products.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Is there some "helper" software on the CD that you might have missed installing?

 

[bobber205]

The scanner has two SCSI connector. My boss said one was IN and one was OUT.I installed everybit of software that was on the CD.

 

[MrChad]

Originally posted by: bobber205
The scanner has two SCSI connector. My boss said one was IN and one was OUT.I installed everybit of software that was on the CD.

SCSI devices are meant to be daisy-chained. You need to terminate the chain on the port you are not using.

 

[bobber205]

How do I terminate that port?

If I put the SCSI card in the old machine and boot it up, the scanner works.

 

[Mark R]

What versions of windows did the 2 computers run?

If the old machine, is as old as you said, did it run Windows XP, or something else like Win2K?
Presumably the new machine runs Windows XP.

If the old machine didn't use Win XP, have you considered the possibilty that the scanner doesn't actually work with WinXP? A quick google search suggests that it's not supporteed (but obviously, if you've had it working on XP, you can discount this).

 

[Nothinman]

How do I terminate that port?

If I put the SCSI card in the old machine and boot it up, the scanner works.

Then it's almost assuredly not a hardware problem. But just for reference terminating a device depends on the device. Some require a physical terminator be attached to one port and some have an internal terminator that can be switched on or off and some will autodetect when they're the last device in a chain and automatically terminate themselves.

 

[bigsnyder]

Sounds like a software problem. Many old scanners do not like XP, many had to have additional patches to the drivers to make XP work. Does the Xeon 2.66 have onboard SCSI? You might have better luck with that. Regardless of which controller you are using, make sure that the drivers for it are properly installed. Then install your scanner software. As far as termination, probably fine, but see if there is a dip switch that enables termination on/off, it needs to be on if nothing else is connected.