Linux, Scanners, - recommendations?

[mikebw at bilow.bilow.uu.ids.net (Mike Bilow)]

Jerry Feldman wrote in a message to Mike Bilow:

 JF> Do many of the SCSI scanners come with SCSI cards? Are SCSI 
 JF> scanners available without the cards?

All SCSI scanners I have run into seem to come with SCSI cards.  These are
usually very cheap, the sort of thing that is too slow to run a hard drive.  
The Mustek scanners under discussion usually seem to come with Data Technology
Corporation (DTC) SCSI cards, and they have device drivers available for
download from their web site ("http://www.datatechnology.com/";) if you are
running something exotic but not too far-fetched, such as NT.  Many cheap
controllers, such as the common DTC 3510x and 3520x, actually emulate Adaptec
AHA-152x controllers which have already widely available drivers; it is DTC's
high-end SCSI controllers, such as the 3138xx, which are badly supported.

Note that many cheap SCSI controllers are clones of devices which may never
have been produced in the same configuration.  For example, there were a lot of
no-name VLB SCSI controllers which would work with Adaptec AHA-152x drivers,
although Adaptec never made any VLB controller using their AIC-6360 chipset. 
(Adaptec's only VLB SCSI controller, the AHA-284x, was based on the much more
advanced AIC-7770 EISA chipset and used an EISA to VLB converter.)

Finally, many SCSI controllers run in PnP mode these days, and they often must
to configured under Linux with "isapnp" tools or switched into non-PnP mode.
 
-- Mike


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