| Menu
News Supported scanners Getting it working USB scanners Known problems Links |
SnapScan Backend for SANEThis page provides information on the SnapScan Backend for SANE. This driver is compatible with a wide range of scanners from Afga, Acer, Benq, Vuego, Epson, Guillemot, Hercules and Mitsubishi. Agfa has released the specs for their older SCSI scanner models. Other vendors have released no specs at all, so it is usually not possible to support all features of every scanner. We used information provided by many existing web site to try
to create an exhaustive page. Thanks to the original authors. If you're looking for Windows drivers for your scanner please
contact the vendors (Agfa, Acer / Benq, Epson) of your scanner directly.
Please don't send me emails relating to Windows drivers. News
Supported ScannersHere is a list of scanners that have at least worked at one time in the past. I'd like to complete this list, so if you own one of the scanners below and there's a blank field, please send me a mail .Benq (formerly known as Acer Peripherals) sell their scanners under a number of names, e.g. Vuego, Scan2Web, ScanPrisa and possibly others. The important part of the model name is the number which you'll find in the table below. Parallel port scanners by Agfa use an unknown protocol for communication. There are currently no plans to support these scanners. If you own a SCSI or USB scanner form Acer, Benq or Agfa which is not listed on this page and you're willing to run some tests, please send me a mail. Note: The Agfa SnapScan Touch uses a different protocol and will not be supported by the Snapscan backend. It may possibly be supported by the HP3300 backend (see the SourceForge project and Bertrik Sikkens homepage for more information. Getting it workingGet the latest version of SANE from the SANE homepage. Development of the SnapScan backend is now done in SANE CVS, so there's no need to download a separate source package for the backend anymore.To correctly install your scanner, you should
machine# tools/find-scanner machine# ln -s /dev/XXXXX /dev/scannerFor USB scanners use: machine# ln -s /dev/XXXXX /dev/usbscanner machine$ xscanimage USB scannersFor USB scanners, you need libusb or the USB scanner module. Somewhere in the future the support for the scanner module will probably be dropped in favour of libusb.LibusbIf you use libusb, make sure you don't have the scanner module loaded ("rmmod scanner"). Your distribution may have installed a hotplug manager that loads the module again once the scanner is detected. In this case you should find the configuration file for the hotplug manager and change it accordingly.Also make sure that you have read/write access to the files in /proc/bus/usb/001/*. The scanner will be autodetected, be sure to remove any device filename entry from snapscan.conf. Scanner moduleThe scanner module can be found in recent 2.3+ kernel versions. During kernel configuration, you have to say "m" to option CONFIG_USB_SCANNER.The module needs to detect your scanner. It will prompt for known scanners during initialization automatically, but some newer scanner won't be found. To find out if the module detected your scanner, examine the output of "cat /proc/bus/usb/devices". You should see an entry like this: T: Bus=01 Lev=01 Prnt=01 Port=01 Cnt=01 Dev#= 2 Spd=12 MxCh= 0If the module didn't detect your scanner, the line starting with I: will "read Driver=(none)" instead. In this case you have to supply the vendor and product ID during module loading. Either specify vendor and product ID directly during modprobe, e.g.: or (more convenient) put the options in /etc/modules.conf:modprobe scanner vendor=0xVVVV product=0xPPPP Some additional general hints for configuration of USB devices in SANE can be found in the sane-usb manpage.options scanner vendor=0xVVVV product=0xPPPP Scanner firmwareMost USB models need a firmware upload in order to work (see table above). The bin file can be found in the windows drivers coming with your scanner. For scanners from Acer / Benq the last three digits of the firmware file depend on the version of your driver CD. The files listed in the table are known to work, other versions will probably work as well.If you have a scanner from Acer or Benq and are uncertain which firmware file to use, run " acerfirm -q". You have to specify the firmware file in snapscan.conf, which can usually be found in /usr/local/etc/sane.d/ if you compiled SANE yourself or /etc/sane.d if you installed SANE from your distribution. The line should start with 'firmware' and contain the fully qualified path to your firmware file, e.g. firmware /path/to/my/firmware.binYou can also upload the firmware to your scanner manually. You need to launch one of agfafirm or acerfirm perl scripts: Note: acerfirm and agfafirm will only work if you use the scanner module to access your USB scanner. It does not work with libusb.acerfirm /dev/usbscanner u34v101.bin The original version of agfafirm can be found at Henri's page. Known problemsHere is a list of known problems that will probably be solved in future releases or that need to be confirmed by users:
"export SANE_DEBUG_SNAPSCAN=2" to see error messages. If you get this message: "XXX YYY" is not one of AGFA SnapScan 300, 310, 600 or 1236s, Acerplease submit XXX YYY and your scanner model number to the bug system so we can add it to the driver.
|