Getting old SCSI scanner to work in XP

[giomach]

I have a Black Widow 9636 HiRes scanner (a rebadged Artec AT12) which operates via a DTC328X SCSI card (specially for scanners, doesn't support daisy-chaining) in a ISA slot under Windows 95.

It's working perfectly, but I want to move the scanner to a newER (but not new) computer which only has PCI slots and runs under Windows XP. I know I'm going to have a lot of problems, and many people will say to get a new scanner, but I want to take it one step at a time until either it works or I can go no further.

I got a used SCSI card for PCI, an Adaptec 19160/29160N. It seems to have installed perfectly in the target computer, using XP's drivers. I next got a 2m cable and connected the scanner to the card, but the scanner is not detected (either by XP device manager or even by the Adaptec card). The scanner had its SCSI ID set to 5 and I left it at that. The Adaptec software says "no device" at ID 5. The only thing I tried changing in the Adaptec software was to switch off "Initiate Wide Negotiation" for ID 5, but no change.

(At first I was also getting "Insufficient termination on the Fast/Ultra-SE connectors" from the Adaptec software. I didn't need a SCSI terminator on the old computer and I got the idea somewhere that the scanner had some kind of "built-in termination". Still I added a terminator to the scanner and got rid of the "Insufficient termination" message, but otherwise no change.)

So my problem is: how do I make the Adaptec card see the scanner? I haven't tried to install a scanner driver on the target computer, but I thought the hardware should be detected even without a driver. Is that not so? For what it's worth, I installed the VueScan program, which reports I have no scanner attached to the machine.

(Artec say that the AT12 scanners do not work with Ultra Wide SCSI. This Adaptec card is Ultra/Fast (but not wide?), and anyway claims to be "backwards compatible with previous generations of SCSI products". Should be OK?)

Thanks for any insights.

 

[hang-the-9]

Sounds like the scanner won't work with the card. SCSI devices are aware of themselves pretty well and if it won't communicate with the card, the scanner interface is not made to the SCSI standard fully. Although the card is compatible with older SCSI devices, the scanner does not seem to be compatible with it. I guess not much difference in the end, but basically, it's not the card's fault it's not working with the scanner but the other way around.

 

[giomach]

Some progress to report.

I swapped the Adaptec 19160/29160N SCSI card for the much simpler Domex 3191D. I also had to change the scanner cable, since the Adaptec has a HD50 connector while the Domex has a 25-pin connector - like the cable I used on my old computer. In fact I used the cable from my old computer, which is the cable that came with the scanner.

And now the computer can see a SCSI scanner, and is asking for the driver. In fact it sees eight scanners (SCSI ID 5, LUN 0 through 7).

Here's the twist, though. Because that old cable is so short, I got a new 2m scanner cable with a 25-pin connector. And with it, the scanner is again invisible. It seems therefore that the scanner has some non-standard cabling requirement. And that is probably the real reason why the Adaptec couldn't see it.

I think that's the hardware side sorted out, and it becomes a software problem now. The latest Black Widow driver is for Win9x. I've tried it in XP and it almost works - the scanner makes some noises but then we get an error. I have an Artec AT12 driver for Win2000 and instructions to install it in XP. Naturally it doesn't find an Artec scanner and fails. I think I have to try and modify this Artec driver, and I can get some help by comparing the Black Widow and Artec drivers for Win9x. That's where I'm at just now.

 

[giomach]

Just a belated update to report success, to some extent anyway.

I can't be sure I'm remembering all the steps taken with the software, but I'll have a go at documenting them for the sake of anyone else in a similar position.

Besides the driver for the SCSI card (dmx3191d_w2k.zip, 430798 bytes), I downloaded two drivers/applications for the scanner: a Black Widow driver for W98 (BlackWidow.zip, 950680 bytes) and an Artec driver for W2K (at12_w2k.exe, 855300 bytes); the general scanning program VueScan (vuex3290.exe, 6606104 bytes); and ASPI for XP (aspi_471a2.exe, 522682 bytes). I have installed and uninstalled them many times, but maybe the following sequence will be valid.

First, install all of the above. This will give you three applications, any of which can potentially run the scanner. My recollection of the situation is as follows. If you have no file aspi32.sys, both VueScan and the Black Widow application report no scanner, while the Artec application suggests you check cables/power etc. If you have a aspi32.sys (as you should after installing it above), VueScan will make the machine hang, Black Widow may work or may reboot, and Artec will suggest checking your cables as before.

If this is happening look in Device Manager. The scanner should show up as eight consecutive entries, and you may be invited to install drivers for all of them every time you boot up Windows. But are the eight scanners shown under "Imaging Devices" or "Other Devices"? If they are under "Other Devices", move them to "Imaging Devices". One way to do this is to install VueScan, as suggested above, which places a file called "scanners.inf" in a subfolder of windows\system32\DRVSTORE. Provided the scanners are listed under "Imaging Devices", you should be able to use Device Manager to install drivers for each of the eight; you can leave the machine to find the drivers, as long as you have scanners.inf and some version of scsiscan.sys in place. With drivers installed, you will no longer have to handle eight requests to install drivers at bootup, and further, the Artec application will stop asking you to check the cables and will behave like the Black Widow application (ie. it will usually work). VueScan however continues to hang the machine (with this unsupported scanner attached), and it can be uninstalled; but take care not to uninstall scanners.inf in the process, eg. rename it or its folder temporarily while you uninstall. This leaves you with a choice of two working applications. I can't say that their rebooting behaviour have gone away, but it seems rare now. By the way, at no time did I find any advantage in using compatibility settings.

I hope this has not omitted anything vital. If nothing else, I can testify that this old SCSI scanner can be made to work in WinXP, with a few hardware and software adjustments.