Scanner on parallel port (HOW)

[Gene Markozen]

I just bought a Digital Research parallel port (EPP) high
resolution scanner.

Is there a way to get it to work in Linux? I downloaded
the SANE package, but it looks like the package doesn't
support using the printer/parallel port. It seems that
the package is targeted at SCSI scanners. There is a
mention of the mustek parallel port scanner, but that has
its own parallel port ISA card.

It may be the case that I have to write my own driver.
Does anyone know where I can find the TWAIN protocol
documentation/specification?

Specs:
Digital Research Technologies
600x1200 dpi 30-bit color scanner
EPP parallel port interface
TWAIN compliant
8.5x11.5 scanning bed

[Gary Momarison]

Gene Markozen <ge...@mdhost.cse.tek.com> writes:

> It may be the case that I have to write my own driver.
> Does anyone know where I can find the TWAIN protocol
> documentation/specification?

There some scanning info in Gary's Encyclopedia at

http://www.aa.net/~swear/pedia/scanning.html

There's an "Artec" entry where someone investigated
that parallel protocol.

[Sam E. Trenholme]

>I just bought a Digital Research parallel port (EPP) high
>resolution scanner.

Info on parallel port drivers is here:

http://www.torque.net/parport

See if you can find drivers for your scanner there.

- Sam

--
Email address here: http://www.samiam.org/ssi/mailme.shtml
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Mp3 reviews here: http://www.samiam.org/music

[Todd A. Wood]

Gene Markozen wrote:
>
> I just bought a Digital Research parallel port (EPP) high
> resolution scanner.
>

> Is there a way to get it to work in Linux? I downloaded
> the SANE package, but it looks like the package doesn't
> support using the printer/parallel port. It seems that
> the package is targeted at SCSI scanners. There is a
> mention of the mustek parallel port scanner, but that has
> its own parallel port ISA card.
>

> It may be the case that I have to write my own driver.
> Does anyone know where I can find the TWAIN protocol
> documentation/specification?

I have an Epson ActionScanner II parallel port connected scanner which
uses the TWAIN drivers. I have successfully configured it on a Red Hat
5.1 machine running 2.0.34.

Have not used it in a while since I enjoy my Linux laptop more. Let me
find the details on setting it up.

Your kernel must be configured for lp support of course... in "dmesg"
you should see
...
lp0 at 0x03bc, (polling)
lp1 at 0x0378, (polling)
...

Your scanner should make some initial noise during boot, just like in
windows 95, provided it normally makes a noise when the parallel port it
scanned.

I have the package sane-0.74 installed. I just checked freshmeat.net
and looks like newer versions of sane are out, but the old version works
fine.

Sane home page is http://www.mostang.com/sane/

...
Sane configuration

My scanner is on lp1 which from above in dmesg you can see is 0x0378.

in /usr/local/etc/sane.d I created a epson.conf file.

The contents of the file is simply:
# /usr/local/etc/sane.d/epson.conf
0x378

...

Then simply
# scanimage epson
or better
# xscanimage epson

...

If I remember.. I could only get scanning to work as root.

I banged my head for hours on this problem, much like yourself... I had
one nice happy dance once this was working... then proceeded to not use
since October 15th (timestamp on my epson.conf file).

Let me know if you have any questions... remove what is obviously not
real from my email address to talk directly.

Sincerely,
Todd A. Wood
Wood Consulting Group, Inc.