KIP 2900 - Anyone here repair these in the past and has info on them?

[John Robertson]

Looking for the upgrade Eprom for the 2021 scanner to enable it to run
with revision 5.5.x of the software on XP. This machine has a
proprietary interface card (KIP6CP - which is a PCI card), so it is not
running on SCSI or USB in case you are curious.

KIP says to contact my local dealer, and the dealer isn't interested in
supporting this ancient device (1999 being ancient). Keepitprinting.com
is a useful resource, however these folks have mostly all moved on to
the more recent machines and can't find anyone there who has this info.

There is one supplier of parts for the machine who may have the correct
Eprom for sale, but he is not returning emails or phone calls...

The basic machine runs fine - copies from the scanner to the printer
clearly, and the computer does recognize the scanner but the earlier
(DOS TSR)version of software that I have appears to be broken in that
the files are zero length when scanned.


I have tracked down the field service manuals (no schematics) for the
machine scanner and printer which have been of help.

So, what I am looking for are: later versions of the Eproms (my revision
appears to be 49012) , service bulletins for the KIP 2900 (2012
scanner), and other info on this orphaned machine.

Thanks,

John :-#)#

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[mrob...@att.net]

John Robertson <sp...@flippers.com> wrote:
> KIP says to contact my local dealer, and the dealer isn't interested
> in supporting this ancient device (1999 being ancient).

Contact the next dealer over. Have an address in their territory handy
in case they ask.

> The basic machine runs fine - copies from the scanner to the printer
> clearly, and the computer does recognize the scanner but the earlier
> (DOS TSR)version of software that I have appears to be broken in that
> the files are zero length when scanned.

You might be doing this already, but: are you running the DOS TSR
software under real DOS on a vintage PC with a reasonably-sized hard
drive? Some DOS applications don't deal too well with 2+ GHz CPUs and
multi-gigabyte hard drives, even if late-model DOS itself will run.

Running on a 15-year-old PC is probably not ideal if you want to do 20
scans a day with this machine, but it will at least tell you if it can
successfully talk to *a* PC.

Do you know if the PCI interface card wants 5 V, 3.3 V, or both? If
the motherboard is late enough to have an ATX power connector, this
probably doesn't apply, but: at the transition from 5 V to 3.3 V PCI
cards, some motherboards had the PCI slot keying to accept either.
Since AT power supplies didn't usually have 3.3 V outputs, the 3.3 V
lines from the PCI slots went to a separate power connector. It
looked like a 6-pin AT power connector but didn't live next to the
standard two 6-pin power connectors in line.

I had an Intel Socket 5 motherboard from early 1995 that was like this.
I kept it long enough that I tried to use a 3.3 V PCI card with it and
nothing happened; the card physically fit in the PCI slot but none of
the software could see it. A LM317 provided enough juice to the 3.3 V
input on the motherboard to make the card work.

If you don't have any documentation, sometimes you can get a hint on
what the command-line switches are by looking at the program with a hex
editor. Sometimes there are switches the program can parse that aren't
in the documentation or the /? output. This doesn't work if the program
was packed with one of the executable compressor tools; some unpackers
are available if you Google.

Matt Roberds