Parrallel Port Scanner with xsane not working
 

hi all, i picked up an old hp scanjet 3200c which is listed by the sane project as in good status.

the scanner works in windows xp, and suse but not slackware - yet :D

I have "ppdev" as module in my kernel and it shown as being there in "cat /proc/modules" and so is "parport" as well.

Root or the regular user cant get it to work.

I'm using the linuxpackages xsane driver that ken z made; and I have a full install of slack 10.2 so I know I have the libsane in here.

I type in "xsane -V umax_pp" as I did in suse, xsane luanches, yells at me for being root, and then xsane closes with the error : "faile to open device 'umax_pp'" Invalid arugment.

I'm tyring it as root to avoid any chown/dev crap-o-la for the moment. Now that "xsane -V umax_pp" is all i have to type in to get it to work in suse.

But when I use the help for "xsane --help" it says I should use the following context: xsane [OPTION]... [DEVICE] which for I believe ? would be "xsane -V /dev/umax_pp:/dev/scanner" but I don't have a /dev/scanner in my /dev directory, how do I get one.

almost all of the how-to's or forum threads for kernel 2.6 and up threads are USB scanner devices.

I can't use "sane-find-scanner" like they do with USB scanners, as the "sane-find-scanner" does not work for parrallel port scanners according to sane's documentation.

my config file for the scanner is at default's.

the sane documentation says that my scanner altho has an HP label on it really is a umax "rebranded" scanner as they put it.

any ideas are appreciated.

Try uncommenting umax_pp from /etc/sane.d/dll.conf that worked for me long time ago.

Hi gbonvehi,

I un-commented "umax_pp" from the /etc/sae.d/dll.conf as you suggested and it still does not work.

I have slackware loaded on my pc in two partitions. One of which is full slackware 10.2 w/the testing 2.6.13 kernel, I build packages for myself on that clean system.

then the other is a custom kernel 2.6.16.20 all updates, etc and that acts as my daily slackware.

Both install's of slackware give me the same errors for the advice you gave me, which is the same error output that I get even if I don't do what you indicated.

Perhaps ?? I am not typing into "konsole" the correct command line to start up the xsane program?

I'm typing "xsane -V umax_pp:/dev/parport0"

The following modules are loaded at startup by me adding the /sbin/modprobe for each to my /etc/rc.d/rc.modules as Slackware 10.2 does not auto-load them up:

ppdev
parport
parport_pc

Is my syntax correct for starting up xsane?

I shouldn't have to manually start up my "sane" backend at all should I?

Do you think I need to modprobe more stuff?

Do you know how I can verify that 'parport0' is really what my scanner is hooked up to?

Sorry these are probably boring and simple questions for you, but I'm new and really am lost on this.

PS...I do see that all the /dev/parport../dev/parport1...etc in my /dev directory are shown with a pad-lock over the icon in KDE..so I suspect that I need to keep trying this as root until I get it to work, then may have to figure out permissions for regular users. Did you have to do anything for yours?

OK......!!!!!!!! Call off the troops!!! I got my scanner to work!!

I found this page:

http://umax1220p.sourceforge.net/trouble.html

In the troubleshooting section I found a script to detect my parrallel port and show me the corresponding settings that my computer was giving me. At first when I used the "ppdiag" script I had a bunch of errors.

Upon reading their directions, they recommend having the bios set to EPP only. My bios by default uses ECP+EPP, but allows me to change it to EPP only. So I changed that and got a little further in the script and had errors. So I manually modprobed the 'parport_pc' and then re-ran the script and the script got to the end and said it could not read ppdev...which I said to myself ok I have to chown it to users...so I 'chown fogie:users /dev/parport0' in console, re-ran the script and it was good across the board. I ran 'xsane -V umax_pp:/dev/parport0' and it worked !!

So in summary if anyone gets their hands on an old parrallel port scanner you need the following in slack 10.2:

1. in /etc/rc.d/rc.modules add "/sbin/modprobe ppdev"
2. in /etc/rc.d/rc.modules add "/sbin/modprobe parport"
3. in /etc/rc.d/rc.modules add "/sbin/modprobe parport_pc"
4. run that script and make sure that you get the correct parport number for number 5 here to follow.
5. as root...in console "chown yourname:users /dev/parport0"
6. make sure you add your users who you want to use the scanner
to the users group.

Slackware has the sane backend daemon and the xsane front end gui already installed.

Note: other scanners then this might want to check out ken Z's
xsane front end package at linuxpackages as their are fixes
to xsane for other scanners.

Now my question is: why did suse work with my bios as ECP+EPP for the scanner? Well as we all know SuSe does what ever it wants...only to break later :D lol, jk.

bye for now.

Well done, parallel port scanners were always a bit of a kludge, even under Windows - always very sensitive to cpu speed and the SuperI/O chip used.

you're so right, under windows when scanning with a parrallel port scanner the gui in windows would almost lock up completely until the scan was complete.

Using the Parallel Port as I/O requires low level real time direct access to I/O space and interrupts, something that is easy to do in DOS, but strongly discouraged by most operating systems. We made parallel port programmers for some exterenal hardware and that is not something that you would want to do outside of the kernel in Linux.

over a week now, this scanner is rocking! scanning w/sane is so nice, even on a slow pc :D there's no bog down in linux LOL incredible.