TWAIN SANE for OS X
In a recent post, I complained that, despite a significant amount of effort, I could not get my HP ScanJet 2300c to work with my PowerBook G4. In the comments, a certain fever606 suggested looking at the TWAIN SANE Interface for MacOS X. I downloaded the various component packages and installed them. It's all quite slick, but the bottom line is this: my HP ScanJet 2300c still doesn't work with my PowerBook. For the details, read on.
I downloaded four packages: TWAIN SANE Interface, SANE Preference Pane, SANE backends and libusb. They all unpacked and installed without a hitch. Hoping that it would all Just Work, I fired up Image Capture and tried to scan. Nothing. (Well, nothing except an error dialog which wouldn't dismiss until I killed the process from the Terminal.) So, I started working my way through the FAQ.
Running sane-find-scanner found the scanner. Excellent. Running scanimage > test.pnm did nothing detectable. (Running that with full debugging to a log file generated 11M of output before I killed it, so it was doing something. Scouring that log didn't help me much.) I looked at the (genesys) backend's configuration file using the Preference Pane, but I didn't really know what I was doing.
At this point I stopped. I unplugged the scanner, and plugged it back into the Windows box from where it came. TWAIN SANE didn't make my scanner Just Work. I certainly could have put some more time into it, but then I may as well have spent that time getting it to work on my FreeBSD box. The point, as I have emphasised several times over the months, of buying this PowerBook was to drink the Apple kool-aid. I doubt my HP ScanJet will ever Just Work. I might look into buying a supported scanner.
I downloaded four packages: TWAIN SANE Interface, SANE Preference Pane, SANE backends and libusb. They all unpacked and installed without a hitch. Hoping that it would all Just Work, I fired up Image Capture and tried to scan. Nothing. (Well, nothing except an error dialog which wouldn't dismiss until I killed the process from the Terminal.) So, I started working my way through the FAQ.
Running sane-find-scanner found the scanner. Excellent. Running scanimage > test.pnm did nothing detectable. (Running that with full debugging to a log file generated 11M of output before I killed it, so it was doing something. Scouring that log didn't help me much.) I looked at the (genesys) backend's configuration file using the Preference Pane, but I didn't really know what I was doing.
At this point I stopped. I unplugged the scanner, and plugged it back into the Windows box from where it came. TWAIN SANE didn't make my scanner Just Work. I certainly could have put some more time into it, but then I may as well have spent that time getting it to work on my FreeBSD box. The point, as I have emphasised several times over the months, of buying this PowerBook was to drink the Apple kool-aid. I doubt my HP ScanJet will ever Just Work. I might look into buying a supported scanner.
If you're just after a scanner and quality/performance/etc isn't too important, I've got an old Mac 9600 (early PPC chip - model before the first G3) setup with a scanner you can have. It's a bit bulky. There's an Apple monitor as well.
ReplyDelete