Am 06.03.2018 um 23:34 schrieb Bob Louden: > Dear mailing list. Please excuse me if I am not using this mailing list > properly. > > I created a request for help a few days ago in the Linux Mint Hardware > forum but have not had any luck with responses. > > I have this very nice, albeit old, scanner that I cannot get to work -- > though I feel like I am very close to having it work. Alas, I am on the > brink of giving up on it. I also have this not-as-good Plustek scanner > that I've started messing with and it was from searching for help with > it that I found your mailing list. > > Anyway, if there is anyone out there who might be able to help me, here > is a link to my Linux Mint forum > post: https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=264978 > > Please feel free to respond to me via either email or in the forum.
Bob, after reading the conversation on the Mint forum it seems to me that the host machine and the scanner have a, let's say, very serious communication problem: The excerpt from syslog after "UPDATE2" in your first post there shows the message "scsi host6: scsi scan: INQUIRY result too short (7), using 36". The "inquiry" command is the first command sent by a SCSI host to a SCSI device when the host detects a new SCSI device. (I know, the scanner is connected via Firewire, not via a physical SCSI interface, but Firewire uses the SCSI commands for several device types.) When a SCSI device receives this comamnd, it should send back a description of itself: What type of device (disk, optical drive, tape drive, scanner etc) it is, its vendor vendor name, product name and other stuff. A SCSI device must send at least 36 bytes to the host computer, and the content of these 36 bytes is well standardized. You can find a description of the inquiry command for example on pages 90-99 of this file: https://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/support/disc/manuals/scsi/100293068a.pdf (it is hard to find a "generic" description of the SCSI commands, so I just opened the first result of a Google search for "scsi protocol specification". As already said, the first 36 bytes inquiry command are well standardized, so it does not matter much that this PDF describes the wrong device type.) The type of the device is described in bits 0-4 of byte 0 in the inquiry data (page 92 of the aforementioned PDF) – and, according to syslog, they say that the device is a disk which is obviously wrong. Another oddity in the syslog messages: The scanner has apparently sent only 7 bytes, not the expected 36 bytes. But it seems that the product name ("LS-4000 ED"), stored in bytes 16-31 of the inquiry data, has been sent to the host anyway. In other words: The communication between the computer and the scanner is really messed up. Hence I think that the idea to replace the firewire controller and driver chips (as you mention in the forum under "NEWS FLASH") is technically reasonable – but I also understand that doing this on a "commercial basis" is somewhat unreasonable. But before you consider this (despite the costs...) you should double-check that the Firewire interface of your computer works: Try to connect another Firewire device to the computer and check if it works better. Similary, you could check if the scanner shows similar symptoms when it is connected to another computer. Since we suspect a hardware problem, you could try any other machine that runs under Linux, MacOS or Windows. Abel -- sane-devel mailing list: sane-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sane-devel Unsubscribe: Send mail with subject "unsubscribe your_password" to sane-devel-requ...@lists.alioth.debian.org