Connect Epson 3200 to two computers

[Tony Karp]

I just bought an Epson Perfection 3200. It has Firewire and USB 2.0
connectivity.

I have a Dell 4100 with Adaptec Firewire and USB 2.0 cards, and an HP XT395
laptop, which has a built-in Firewire port (4-pin).

The 4100 runs Windows 98SE and the laptop has XP Home. The Epson software,
including Silverfast installed on both machines without a problem.

When I hooked the scanner to the 4100 using Firewire, it was unhappy and the
device manager showed a Firewire device with no driver (???). Rather than
troubleshoot this, I hooked the scanner to the 4100 with the USB 2.0 cable and
it worked fine.

So I disconnected the 4100 and hooked the scanner to the laptop with a Firewire
cable and it worked just fine as well.

So, I thought, what will happen if I hook the scanner, through their respective
cables, to both computers at the same time? Smoke and flame? neither one
working? So I tried it.

And guess what? It worked just fine. The 4100 through USB, and the laptop
through Firewire. The ports are isolated from each other, and they only receive
a signal when the scanner software in the respective machine is activated.

So it looks like the Epson 3200 can be used as a shared peripheral, between two
computers, if you hook it up as I described.

As a test, I just opened the TWAIN capture on both machines at the same time.
Then I did a preview on each machine, one at a time. No problem.

Just don't try to do scans from both machines at the same time. As long as the
green light on the scanner is not flashing (busy) either computer can access
the scanner.

Tony Karp, TLC Systems Corp

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