reverse engineering..how hard?

[PixelMover]

I have a scanner, but it only has drivers for Mac OS..how hard would it be to 'modify' or rewrite these to work on a Win machine?

Drivers for Win were never made for this scanner.

Just curious, not rich enough to pay anybody to do it anyway (and probably illegal to do it, right? )

[PixelMover]

P.S.

I know somebody made some sort of 'generic' driver that works this thing under LINUX, but haven't actually seen it wrk or been able to find out moer...

[David]

SCSI or ECP?

[PixelMover]

SCSI

[David]

I have never set up a scanner before in linux so this is a stab in the dark. I think you need to use SANE for Linux (Scanner Access Now Easy). SCSI is a pretty standard way to use scanners.
In windows I think that you wil need specific drivers or a generic ones. Try plugging in the scanner and booting into windows - see if windows detects it.

[6502kid]

penguin is on the right track. There must be an
existing way to make it work.

Reverse engineering is theoretically possible, but you better
be a major league assembler programmer with lots of
time and access to ALL of the tech spec. sheets for the
device....

Good luck.:)

[Vovan]

The problem is not the specs. Just download any standart communication protocol and look into PNP theory (a good resource book is needed).
The problem is time and a lazy seller. Anyway he has made the scanner he got to make a driver, jut try to write him E-mail.

[PixelMover]

Originally posted by Vovan
<snip>
The problem is time and a lazy seller. Anyway he has made the scanner he got to make a driver, jut try to write him E-mail.

Aaah..if it were that easy...:D

The Manufacturer is Sctiex. This is a top-end pre-press transparency scanner. Retail price was about US $ 100,000 back then. Model has been discontinued for about 7 years I think.. Because of the nature of this scanner and it's intended buyers, only drivers for Apple, Sun, Scilicon Graphics and maybe unix were ever made. I tried contacting Scitex on several occasions. They refuse to answer any questions unless i set up a customer account with them.I have spoken to ppl who use Scitex equipment and they all warned me for the seam thing: If I set up a customer account, and I start asking questions, hefty bills will start coming my way. Like $ 150 for them to tell me if there is a PC driver or not...
Even if it is a bit old and by today's specs the tech specs aren't that spectacular anymore (42 bit color, 2,750dpi up to 6x7cm neg/slides) They still are 'pro'specs and I simply haven't seen anything around that beats the sheer quality of the scans. I've seen drumscanner outputs that were worse than this, actually...
So you can understand why I want it to work,, Right now I'm using it with an Apple LCII (8mhz...) because that works, but scanning takes me up to 45 min. per scan now, due to the slow mac. Get a faster Mac? Sure, i have it, but the drivers don't work on it :o

[Quaky]

If there is a linux driver it COULD be open source. Try to get the source for that linux driver and port it to windows. It's not that hard (ported the DOOM code once) but you need an extensive knowledge about both OSes and C/C++

Personaly I would go for an El cheapo scanner :D

[PixelMover]

Originally posted by Quaky
If there is a linux driver it COULD be open source. Try to get the source for that linux driver and port it to windows. It's not that hard (ported the DOOM code once) but you need an extensive knowledge about both OSes and C/C++

Personaly I would go for an El cheapo scanner :D

Well, the scanner was el cheapo for me, I traded it for a used nikon F4S :)
As for the other part, i've been trying to find the linux driver for over a year. I'd be more than happy to just run it under Linux, I have my OS's on removable HD's so I'll just make another one for Linux and be happily scanning it then.
The last 4 lines you wrote, however, are spanish to me...:D
I find DOS scary....:p

[David]

SCSI is a pretty standard protocol. Have you tried hooking it up to a PC and letting windows try and find it? If you use SuSE Linux it will help set the scanner up. There has to be SOME sort of generic SCSI scanner driver.