I need to get my scanner up and running, so if someone knows what I need to get the system to recognise the scanner, I need the info.

My system is Sarge KDE and the scanner is an off brand hooked up to a parallel card.

Can it be done?

It all depends on whether there is a driver for your particular scanner. As you haven't mentioned any kind of identification it is impossible to say which driver should be used. Do you have any idea what make/model of scanner it is inside? Without this information it is virtually impossible. Once you know the model then look for a SANE backend to handle it. /etc/sane.d/dll.conf must have the line corresponding to your scanner uncommented. You must then edit /etc/sane.d/backend.conf where backend is the name of the backend compatible with your scanner. The precise format of these configuration files varies however they each have their own man pages so modifying them shouldn't pose any real problem. Once the proper config files are edited correctly then "scanimage -L" should list your scanner providing that it is connected to the computer and powered.

The maker is Relisys and the model is VM6552, I did a search for this scanner and I found drivers for Windows 98, ME, 2000, NT and MAC so I am hoping there is one for Linux!

The teco3 backend apparently supports your scanner although says it is untested (http://www.zago.net/sane/index.html#teco). The man page for this backend is sane-teco3. Good luck getting it to work.

Thanks for the help!

Now is when my newbie status shows, I have no idea wha you you are talking about. I have only been using a Linux (Debian) system for about 2 weeks. I have managed to learn how to install and to start adding programs to make it a useful box, but I am still learning.

The man pages form a large and very useful set of documentation on practically every command on your machine. It also documents a lot of C functions and a fair number of configuration files. To access the man pages type "man command" so for example for help on the scanimage command use "man scanimage". There are man pages relating to config files. These will have reasonably obvious names in most circumstances (e.g. the man page documenting the /etc/fstab file is accessed with "man fstab"). The sane configuration is described in general in "man sane" and the documentation for the teco3 backend is documented in "man sane-teco3". In the case of the teco3 backend the file provided already should also provide a clue and may in fact work as it stands although I can't be sure.