SANE Scanner Access Now Easy sane-mustek(5)
NAME
sane-mustek - SANE backend for Mustek SCSI flatbed scanners
(and some other devices)
DESCRIPTION
The sane-mustek library implements a SANE (Scanner Access
Now Easy) backend that provides access to Mustek (and some
relabeled Trust and Primax) SCSI and parport flatbed
scanners. At present, the following scanners are known to
work more or less with this backend:
Paragon MFS-6000CX
Paragon MFS-12000CX
Paragon MFC-600S, 600 I CD, ScanMagic 600 I SP
Paragon MFC-800S, 800 I SP
Paragon MFS-6000SP
Paragon MFS-8000SP
Paragon MFS-1200SP, MFS-12000SP
ScanExpress 6000SP
ScanExpress 12000SP, 12000SP Plus, Paragon 1200 I SP,
ScanMagic 9636S, 9636S Plus
Paragon 1200 LS
ScanExpress A3 SP
Paragon 1200 SP Pro
Paragon 1200 A3 Pro
Paragon 600 I EP
Paragon 600 I N
Trust Imagery 1200
Trust Imagery 1200 SP
Trust Imagery 4800 SP
Trust SCSI Connect 19200
Primax Compact 4800 SCSI
More details can be found on the Mustek SCSI backend
homepage http:/www.meier-geinitz.de/sane/mustek-backend/.
Don't mix up MFS (Paragon), Pro and ScanExpress models!
They're completely different. Check the exact model name!
Note that most of the above scanners come with a SCSI inter-
face. The only non-SCSI scanners that have some support at
this point is the 600 I N and 600 I EP scanners. The
former one comes with its own parallel port adapter (i.e.,
it does not attach to the printer port). Both scanners use
the SCSI protocol internally, too. More info on how to use
these parallel port scanners can be found below in section
PARALEL PORT SCANERS. Other parallel port scanners are
not supported by this backend but you may be successful
using the Mustek parallel port backend mustekpp, see sane-
mustekpp(5). USB scanners are also not supported by this
backend but the ma1509, mustekusb, gt68xx, and plustek
backends include support for some of them, see sane-
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ma1509(5), sane-mustekusb(5), sane-gt68xx(5), and sane-
plustek(5).
Mustek scanners have no protection against exceeding the
physical scan area height. That is, if a scan is attempted
with a height that exceeds the height of the scan surface,
the scanner begins making loud noises and the scan mechanism
may be damaged. Thus, if you hear such a noise, IMEDIATELY
turn off the scanner. This shouldn't happen if your scanner
is in the list of known scanners. There is more information
in the /usr/doc/sane-1.0.19/PROBLEMS file.
If you own a Mustek (or Trust) scanner other than the ones
listed above that works with this backend, please let us
know by sending the scanner's exact model name (look at the
front and back of the scanner) and a debug output to sane-
devel@lists.alioth.debian.org. You can get the debug output
by setting the environment variable SANEDEBUGMUSTEK to 5
and showing the list of available scanners with scanimage -
L. Please send all of it to the mailing list. You must be
subscribed to sane-devel before you can send mail to the
list. See http:/www.sane-project.org/mailing-lists.html for
details.
DEVICE NAMES
This backend expects device names of the form:
special
Where special is either the path-name for the special device
that corresponds to a SCSI scanner or the port number at
which the parallel port scanners can be found (see section
PARALEL PORT SCANERS below). For SCSI scanners, the spe-
cial device name must be a generic SCSI device or a symlink
to such a device. The program sane-find-scanner helps to
find out the correct device. Under Linux, such a device name
could be /dev/sg0 or /dev/sg3, for example. See sane-
scsi(5) for details.
CONFIGURATION
The contents of the mustek.conf file is a list of options
and device names that correspond to Mustek scanners. Empty
lines and lines starting with a hash mark (#) are ignored.
See sane-scsi(5) on details of what constitutes a valid dev-
ice name.
The supported options are linedistance-fix, lineart-fix,
legal-size, buffersize, blocksize, strip-height, disable-
double-buffering, disable-backtracking, and force-wait.
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Options come in two flavors: global and positional ones.
Global options apply to all devices managed by the backend
whereas positional options apply just to the most recently
mentioned device. Note that this means that the order in
which the options appear matters!
Option linedistance-fix is positional and works around a
problem that occurs with some SCSI controllers (notably the
ncr810 controller under Linux). If color scans have hor-
izontal stripes and/or the colors are off, then it's likely
that your controller suffers from this problem. Turning on
this option usually fixes the problem.
Option lineart-fix is positional and works around a timing
problem that seems to exist with certain MFS-12000SP
scanners. The problem manifests itself in dropped lines
when scanning in lineart mode. Turning on this option
should fix the problem but may slow down scanning a bit.
Option legal-size is positional and sets the size of the
scan area to Legal format. Set this option if you own a
Paragon 12000 LS. It can't be distinguished by software from
a ScanExpress 12000 SP (ISO A4 format).
Option buffersize is a positional option that overrides the
default value set for the size of the SCSI buffer. The
buffer size is specified in kilobytes. The default value is
128. Because of double buffering the buffer actually sent to
the scanner is half the size of this value. Try to increase
this value to achieve higher scan speeds. Note that some
ScanExpress scanners don't like buffer sizes above 64 kb
(buffersize = 128). If your sg driver can't set SCSI buffer
sizes at runtime you may have to change that value, too. See
sane-scsi(5) for details.
Option blocksize is a positional option that overrides the
default value set for the maximum amount of data scanned in
one block. The buffer size is specified in kilobytes. Some
scanners freeze if this value is bigger than 2048. The
default value is 1 GB (so effectively no limit) for most
scanners. Don't change this value if you don't know exactly
what you do.
Option strip-height is a global option that limits the max-
imum height of the strip scanned with a single SCSI read
command. The height is specified in inches and may contain
a fractional part (e.g., 1.5). Setting the strip-height to
a small value (one inch, for example) reduces the likelihood
of encountering problems with SCSI driver timeouts and/or
timeouts with other devices on the same SCSI bus. Unfor-
tunately, it also increases scan times. With current SCSI
adapters and drivers this option shouldn't be needed any
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more.
Option disable-double-buffering is a global option. If set,
the backend will only send one buffer at a time to the
scanner. Try this option if you have trouble while scanning,
e.g. SCSI errors, freezes, or the first few cm are repeated
over and over again in your image.
Option disable-backtracking is a positional option. If set,
the scanner will not move back its slider after each SCSI
buffer is filled (`backtracking'). Setting this option will
lead to faster scans but may also produce horizontal
stripes. This option doesn't work with every scanner (only
some of the paragon models can modify backtracking).
Finally, force-wait is a global option. If set, the backend
will wait until the device is ready before sending the
inquiry command. Further more the backend will force the
scan slider to return to its starting position (not imple-
mented for all scanners). This option may be necessary with
the 600 I N or when scanimage is used multiple times (e.g.
in scripts). The default is off (not set).
A sample configuration file is shown below:
# limit strip height of all scanners to 1.5 inches:
option strip-height 1.5
/dev/scanner # first Mustek scanner
# 1 MB buffer for /dev/scanner:
option buffersize 1024
/dev/sge # second Mustek scanner
# turn on fixes for /dev/sge:
option lineart-fix
option linedistance-fix
SCSI ADAPTER TIPS
You need a SCSI adapter for the SCSI scanners. Even if the
connector is the same as that of parallel port scanners,
connecting it to the computers parallel port will NOT work.
Mustek SCSI scanners are typically delivered with an ISA
SCSI adapter. Unfortunately, that adapter is not worth much
since it is not interrupt driven. It is (sometimes) possi-
ble to get the supplied card to work, but without interrupt
line, scanning will be very slow and put so much load on the
system, that it becomes almost unusable for other tasks.
If you already have a working SCSI controller in your sys-
tem, you should consider that Mustek scanners do not support
the SCSI-2 disconnect/reconnect protocol and hence tie up
the SCSI bus while a scan is in progress. This means that
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no other SCSI device on the same bus can be accessed while a
scan is in progress.
Because the Mustek-supplied adapter is not worth much and
because Mustek scanners do not support the SCSI-2
disconnect/reconnect protocol, it is recommended to install
a separate (cheap) SCSI controller for Mustek scanners. For
example, ncr810 based cards are known to work fine and cost
as little as fifty US dollars.
For Mustek scanners, it is typically necessary to configure
the low-level SCSI driver to disable synchronous transfers
(sync negotiation), tagged command queuing, and target
disconnects. See sane-scsi(5) for driver- and platform-
specific information.
The ScanExpress models have sometimes trouble with high
resolution color mode. If you encounter sporadic corrupted
images (parts duplicated or shifted horizontally) kill all
other applications before scanning and (if sufficient memory
is available) disable swapping.
Details on how to get the Mustek SCSI adapters and other
cards running can be found at http:/www.meier-
geinitz.de/sane/mustek-backend/#SCSI.
PARALEL PORT SCANERS
This backend has support for the Paragon 600 I EP and Para-
gon 600 I N parallel port scanners. Note that the latter
scanner comes with its own ISA card that implements a funky
parallel port (in other words, the scanner does not con-
nected to the printer parallel port).
These scanners can be configured by listing the port number
of the adapter or the parallel port in the mustek.conf file.
Valid port numbers for the 600 I N are 0x26b, 0x2ab, 0x2eb,
0x3ab, 0x3eb. For the 600 I EP use one of these: par-
port0, parport1, parport2, Pick one that doesn't conflict
with the other hardware in your computer. Put only one
number on a single line. Example:
0x3eb
Note that for these scanners usually root privileges are
required to access the I/O ports. Thus, either make fron-
tends such as scanimage(1) and xscanimage(1) setuid root
(generally not recommended for safety reasons) or, alterna-
tively, access this backend through the network daemon
saned(8).
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If the Mustek backend blocks while sending the inquiry com-
mand to the scanner, add the option force-wait to
mustek.conf.
Also note that after a while of no activity, some scanners
themselves (not the SANE backend) turns off their CFL
lamps. This shutdown is not always perfect with the result
that the lamp sometimes continues to glow dimly at one end.
This doesn't appear to be dangerous since as soon as you use
the scanner again, the lamp turns back on to the normal high
brightness. However, the first image scanned after such a
shutdown may have stripes and appear to be over-exposed.
When this happens, just take another scan, and the image
will be fine.
FILES
/etc/sane.d/mustek.conf
The backend configuration file (see also description of
SANECONFIGDIR below).
/usr/lib/sane/libsane-mustek.a
The static library implementing this backend.
/usr/lib/sane/libsane-mustek.so
The shared library implementing this backend (present
on systems that support dynamic loading).
ENVIRONMENT
SANECONFIGDIR
This environment variable specifies the list of direc-
tories that may contain the configuration file. Under
UNIX, the directories are separated by a colon (`:'),
under OS/2, they are separated by a semi-colon (`;').
If this variable is not set, the configuration file is
searched in two default directories: first, the current
working directory (".") and then in /etc/sane.d. If
the value of the environment variable ends with the
directory separator character, then the default direc-
tories are searched after the explicitly specified
directories. For example, setting SANECONFIGDIR to
"/tmp/config:" would result in directories
"tmp/config", ".", and "/etc/sane.d" being searched (in
this order).
SANEDEBUGMUSTEK
If the library was compiled with debug support enabled,
this environment variable controls the debug level for
this backend. Higher debug levels increase the verbos-
ity of the output.
Value Description
0 no output
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1 print fatal errors
2 print important messages
3 print non-fatal errors and less important messages
4 print all but debugging messages
5 print everything
Example: export SANEDEBUGMUSTEK=4
SEE ALSO
sane(7), sane-find-scanner(1), sane-scsi(5), sane-
mustekusb(5), sane-gt68xx(5), sane-plustek(5), sane-
mustekpp(5)
/usr/doc/sane-1.0.19/mustek/mustek.CHANGES
http:/www.meier-geinitz.de/sane/mustek-backend/
AUTHOR
David Mosberger, Andreas Czechanowski, Andreas Bolsch (SE
extensions), Henning Meier-Geinitz, James Perry (600 I EP).
BUGS
Scanning with the SCSI adapters supplied by Mustek is very
slow at high resolutions and wide scan areas.
Some scanners (e.g. Paragon 1200 A3 ] Pro, SE A3) need more
testing.
The gamma table supports only 256 colors, even if some
scanners can do more.
More detailed bug information is available at the Mustek
backend homepage: http:/www.meier-geinitz.de/sane/mustek-
backend/.
ATRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attri-
butes:
ATRIBUTE TYPE ATRIBUTE VALUE
Availability SUNWsane-backend
Interface Stability Uncommitted
NOTES
Source for SANE is available on http:/opensolaris.org.
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