# Bit of info wanted on an old Umax scanner ....



## john1 (Nov 25, 2000)

Hi,

I wonder if someone could tell me a bit about a UMAX S6E scanner,
i've been given one and it has an SCSI connector at the back.

It also has a fitting that looks like a parallel port fitting,
but its not marked, and i don't know if it would run from the parallel
port or not. I don't have any SCSI stuff or experience, so if it would
run from the parallel port, that would be my approach.

The previous owner had it running using the SCSI fitting, i think on
an Apple machine, its not a new scanner but i think it has pretty good
definition/resolution.

Can i run it from the parallel port ?

John


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## md2lgyk (Jul 3, 2003)

Have you tried their website (www.umax.com)? Somebody gave me an old UMAX (not the same model as yours) and I was able to download updated drivers and a user's manual.


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## john1 (Nov 25, 2000)

Hi md2lgyk,

I had not tried their website, "www.umax.co.uk", which i found from "www.umax.com"
I have now, but i could not find anything about their "Umax S6e".
It seems they have dis-owned it, and have no reference to it.

Its quite a good model by all accounts, and there are still plenty about.

I am inclined to think that it may well be possible to run it from the parallel
port at the back, but i don't know, and i don't want to try without checking first.

I have downloaded a driver for the "Vistascan 2.43" which uses the same driver,
according to:
http://www.zone6400.com/files/6400gaming.html

But that may or may not be the right driver. I would like be sure of the right one.

Regards, John


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## acraftylady (Jan 22, 2003)

If you look at this used one for sale on e-bay it says it comes with a floppy that has vista scan 2.24 on it so maybe you have the right driver, just an updated version. If you got the cable with it should be the same one in the picture and that looks like a parallel port cable. From what I remember about parallel port is not as good as USB and SCSI is probably better but someone else will know on that. Also it says the scanner supports these operating systems.
Windows 3.x/95/98/98SE/NT 4.0 | Mac System 7.1 to 9.1


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## john1 (Nov 25, 2000)

Hi acraftylady,

Thanks for that page from ebay.
That certainly is the one i have.
Not exactly expensive is it !
I hadn't expected to see one for under ten dollars.
Still theres another five days left (as of now) so maybe it will rise.

Had a good look at that picture,
and the cable looks like an SCSI cable to me, to go with the card.

If i can find some info about this model on-line then maybe i can tell
if it can be run from the parallel port, if it can-not then i suppose
i will have to fix up an SCSI arrangement, and i have no knowledge or
experience with SCSI at all.

So i am hoping it can be run from the parallel port.

Cheers, John


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## acraftylady (Jan 22, 2003)

When electronics are very old you don't get much for them in my opinion. They will be lucky if they get a bid on that because basic scanners are so cheap now and run much faster than parallel port. I bet I could find this at the fleamarket here for $5 or $10 if it's very old. I have only used something once with a parallel port on our old computer and it had a screw on each side you had to tighten after you plugged it in the back of the computer and the end looked like the one in the picture so that's why I thought that but if the scanner comes with the card in the box then I guess that would be the cable with it.

If you look here at the specs it just says SCSI-2 and does not mention parallel port but maybe e-mail umax and ask them.


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## john1 (Nov 25, 2000)

Hi,

Stumbled into a different area of the Umax.com site, from google.
This bit lists the spec for my S6E ....

http://www.umax.com/support/knowledge/specifications.jsp?model=Vista+S6E

It shows the 'Hardware Interface' as SCSI-2, (just as acraftylady says)
and its ok with Win98se.
The resolution is shown as 300 dpi x 600 dpi, not quite enough for what
i want to copy ... small photos ... 
But it says that it has a resolution of 4800 dpi x 4800 dpi with UltraView®
technology. Which would be fine for what i want.
Although i dont know what it means, my guess is that the machine might
make several passes to build up a higher resolution from the 600/300 unit.
But i dont know.

It looks like this unit is for SCSI only, so i will have to see about
sorting that out next.

So it looks like Umax still have some stuff about the S6E on the web,
i still haven't found a manual though ! i will keep looking.

The main reason why the parallel or printer port is falling out of favour
is because its not normally 'hot plug-able' unlike the USB points which
can have items plug in and out without needing to shut down the computer.
Same applies to serial ports, although for some curious reason these are
hanging on with great tenacity for dial up modems. This is so curious that
i wonder if there is something particular about the serial port that makes
it attractive for dial up modems ...

Speed-wise i think the parallel port is still the fastest standard fitting
Serial port is a slower interface, if you fit an SCSI card you can get
very fast information rates, i am quite happy with ethernet cards myself,
they are quite fast enough for me.

Still looking for an S6E manual,
Cheers, John


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## acraftylady (Jan 22, 2003)

I see my link didn't work. It was the same one you posted with the specs. I googled to find it. Good luck sorting it all out.


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## slipe (Jun 27, 2000)

The cable in the Ebay photo is an old SCSI cable.

I dont think you can hurt anything by trying the parallel port. You might note that the scanner on Ebay has the SCSI card, cable, drivers and documentation and it still doesnt have any bids with a starting bid of $10. Your downside risk isnt that great, and unless you intend investing in a SCSI card and cable the scanner is useless to you if it doesnt work on parallel.

It will be very slow on the parallel port. I had an old S12 and used it on SCSI and never tried the parallel, but parallel port scanners were always considerably slower than their USB counterparts. It had two parallel ports but I have no idea what they were for or whether you could scan using them. Keep the resolution low. Most photos dont show any improvement over 200PPI, and that scanner is useless for slides and film. You might want to read this  go to the second page where he uses a photo taken with a Nikon fixed focal length lens on a tripod and couldnt get any improvement in resolution over 300PPI. Most photos dont have the resolution of the one he was using. http://scantips.com/basics08.html Interpolated resolution is useless. The scanner is 300PPI.

I used Magic Scan instead of Vista Scan. Magic Scan is their upper end driver but it only works with SCSI.


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## john1 (Nov 25, 2000)

Hi Slipe,

I read through that link you posted, and some of its associated pages.
And i now think i am looking at my problem from the wrong direction.

I have a working scanner, a 'Lexmark X 1180' not top of the range.
The photographs i am trying to copy are negatives, they are quite
small negatives, and they are colour negatives.

I now think i am probably using the scanner incorrectly.

I was very pleased when a friend gave me this old scanner, as he
seemed to think i would get quite acceptable results from these negs
using this old scanner.

The results i am getting from my Lexmark are truly dismal,
but i now think that may be because i am not using it properly.
Its DPI is more than twice that of the old Umax so the results should
be reasonable.

Trouble is, i dunno what i could be doing wrong.
One thing occurs to me - maybe they should be back-lit ... ?
I have no idea how to do that, or even if that would do it.
The negatives are 12mm x 17mm approximately.

Any idea how i should try .... maybe a mirror ... ?
I could leave the lid open and shine a lamp on to the neg ... ?

John


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## acraftylady (Jan 22, 2003)

john1 said:


> Hi Slipe,
> 
> I read through that link you posted, and some of its associated pages.
> And i now think i am looking at my problem from the wrong direction.
> ...


If you are trying to scan negatives it sounds like you are trying to scan them regular and you need an adapter to do that if your scanner has that option. Some scanners come with the adapter and some you need to buy it separate but you need to check your manual to see if they offer this. I used a friends scanner once that had the adapter and the negatives scanned OK but then I had the chance to try one of the scanners just for negatives and I was much more pleased with the results but this was a few years ago and she paid $400 for it.


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## slipe (Jun 27, 2000)

Your results will be more dismal with the Umax. It is rated at 600 X 300. The 600 is the number of stops the carriage makes per inch during the scan. The 300 is your actual optical resolution from the CCDs in the scanner. With printers the larger horizontal resolution makes some difference, but it doesnt seem to with a scanner.

Slides and film have to be lighted from the top and you must deactivate the lower light. Most scanners anymore have a lighted top, and the driver turns off the lower light when you scan slides or negatives. You have separate selections for transparencies and film because film has an orange tint that the driver has to remove. It is quite difficult to get the orange removed without an advanced image editing program and some knowledge of how to use it. 

There were some pages online where people made their own slide adapters, but they had to remove the lamp in the main scanner. Some scanners dont open anymore, so that is much more difficult. Unless your Lexmark has a plug for an adapter and the driver has a transparency and film setting you arent likely to be able to make your own adapter and clean up the orange unless you are pretty good at image editing.

Those pages with people making their own adapters are several years old. You can get an Epson 3490 flatbed scanner for $95 delivered from Newegg. It is 3200 X 6400 PPI and has a built in film and slide adapter. At the time people were making their own adapters, scanners with slide adapters built in were pricey.

If you had a 600 PPI optical scanner (600 X 1200 or 600 X 2400) with an adapter in the lid you would get only marginal 4 X 6 prints from a 35mm slide. The pixels from a dedicated film scanner arent as pure as those from a digital camera and inexpensive flatbeds arent as good as dedicated film scanners. For the tiny film strips you are trying to scan the results would be useless except for maybe a tiny screen display of the image. You couldnt print it at any size large enough to see with even marginal quality. And that is from a scanner designed to scan them. The jerry-rigged adapters werent nearly as good as flatbeds with lightlids. 

You could probably get a fairly decent 4 X 6 from the 3200 PPI Epson 3490 with those tiny negatives. But it comes with only a 35mm film and slide adapter, so you would have to make your own adapter. Even if you wanted to invest in a dedicated film scanner you would probably have more problems trying to get them to take that film.

You are spinning your wheels IMO trying to scan tiny negatives with a 600 PPI optical flatbed scanner not designed for that. The scans from the Umax would be of even lower quality than your Lexmark  there just isnt enough resolution for those tiny negatives.


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## john1 (Nov 25, 2000)

Hi Slipe,

Its not that often that i have flashes of insight, but it looks like i may have
been right about the negatives needing to be back-lit.

And the Umax looks like it has a lamp in the lid, i will have to check that out.

If the Umax can do them in the proper manner, that would definately be the way to
go, even if the resolution is not as high as the Lexmark.

I have quite a lot of old negatives, this will enable me to put them on to my
computer, really to see what they are more than to take the place of a proper
photo-picture. And of course to categorise them, there are quite a lot.

I have tried to see what the negatives are pictures of, but it is very difficult
with colour negatives, even using lights and magnifying glass to check them out,
its difficult to see what is what, let alone recognise any faces.

You are quite right, most of them have a heavy orange tint, so i suppose i will be
searching for an appropriate program to adjust the colouring accordingly, i have
tried adjusting this myself using 'Paint Shop Pro 4' but my results are far from
good !!

I think i will concentrate on getting the Umax up and running.

This will mean getting SCSI working, something else i have no experience of.
I suppose i had better start by looking around for an SCSI card.

Cheers, John


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## john1 (Nov 25, 2000)

Had another look at that Umax, its stacked with other stuff at the moment, so i didn't get to open it up, but the lid definately has a cable going to it, so i am guessing it has a light in the lid.
If i get a chance i will have a good look.
Also it doesn't look quite like the pictures posted earlier, the curved section of the lid extends along to the rear of the scanner. That is most strange.
And i am also surprised at the cost of the SCSI cards.
That scanner from ebay posted earlier looks like it would be worth buying just for the card !

Regards, John


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## acraftylady (Jan 22, 2003)

I never heard of a scanner with a light in the lid, post back when you get it open. Watch the e-bay add because it says sold as is and just says everything included but no where does it say in working order so you might want to e-mail the seller and see if this was up and running or tested to work. Sometimes people pick up stuff cheap from the fleamarket to resell so it wasn't something they just took down because they got a new one.


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## john1 (Nov 25, 2000)

Hi acraftylady,

You got me interested now.
I'm gonna go and check it out.

John


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## acraftylady (Jan 22, 2003)

I am addicted to e-bay that's for sure. I mostly buy out of print cross stitch patterns I want to do. You would be surprised at the bidding wars us ladies have on out of print patterns we want to get our hands on. The most expensive thing I bought was a few weeks ago. My son wanted some playstation game that was put out with a special joystick. They only made a limited number of these once and he just had to have this and had been saving is grass cutting money. I think we paid a little under $200 but my son said it was more when it was out new. I was worried because I never spent that much on e-bay but we had a great seller and this thing was new in the package and in perfect working order so I was relieved and he was thrilled getting to play this game finally.

If you have never bought on e-bay before just make sure to check your sellers feedback for positive and negative remarks. My rule is 5 negatives and I move on and find it elsewhere depending on what the complaints were. I just found out about this site. http://www.toolhaus.org/cgi-bin/negs You put in the sellers name and it will group negative and neutral feedback so you don't have to search page by page for all the red ones, so handy.

Also if you search for the scanner and it comes up look in the upper right and their is an option to put it in your e-bay favorites. Then every time one comes up for auction you will get an e-mail as soon as it's listed.


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## john1 (Nov 25, 2000)

Hi acraftylady,

I checked on the Umax scanner, it does have a light in the lid, and its
on a travelling mechanism.
In a previous post i mentioned the curved bit of the lid looked different
to the one on e-bay, and you can see from these pics what i mean.
The flying lead from the lid plugs into a socket marked 'OPTONS' on the
back of the scanner.

I think this unit fits very well with what Slipe was saying about slides
and film needing to be lit from the top, and deactivating the lower light.
Although the resolution may not be that good, i do think that this Umax
is my best bet.

I am considering putting in a bid for the one on ebay - just for the SCSI
card and leads.
As for removing the orange tint, well that may be a problem.

Also i am wondering why Slipe says that the 'Enhanced Mode' does not
improve the definition at all.

Here are a few pics of that Umax .... regards, John


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## acraftylady (Jan 22, 2003)

Ok, very interesting scanner, good luck.


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## slipe (Jun 27, 2000)

Most scanners anymore have a light in the lid for negatives. The Epson 3490 I mentioned earlier has a light in the lid plus sophisticated software for scanning film and removing the orange  plus probably the ability to scan multiple images from a strip at once.

You will need a Centronics 50 pin SCSI 1 cable. If you look at the photo from the Ebay unit there is a device on the end of the cable to terminate the SCSI circuit. Even though the cable is listed as SCSI 1, the scanner is SCSI 2 and you should get a card that gives you 20Mb/sec. You also need one with that old large Centronics connector, so you will have to sort through cards until you find one. An alternative would be to get an adapter for the connection from the cable to the scanner or a cable with different connectors on each end.

It would be cheaper to get the scanner from Ebay. Since the lid is different it might not have the light in the lid  my S12 lid looked exactly like that one and it didnt have a light in the lid. And there are not film and slide holders that normally come with a scanner with a light in the lid. If there is no reserve on the item and they will actually package and ship it for $5 plus $14 shipping you cant get the cable, card and terminator for anywhere near that price.

If you can find the right driver for your scanner you would probably have a negative setting to switch to the light in the lid. That would also take the orange tint from the negative.

If you cant find a VistaScan driver with the ability to control the light in the lid you might try MagicScan. It is the driver for the big buck Umax scanners and is much better than VistaScan. It works on all SCSI Umax scanners. I used only MagicScan on my S12 even though it came with VistaScan. It had selections for negatives and transparencies. You can find the MagicScan driver by looking for drivers for a Powerlock II.

Ultraview does not scan the image multiple times. It just interpolates the optical results to a larger size, guessing at the missing pixels. You would do the same thing with an upsample in Irfanview or PSP. The S6E is 300 PPI optical. Anything above that is just an interpolation. You could scan at 600 X 600 and just interpolate the horizontal pixels, but that doesnt seem to be better than interpolation of a 300 X 300 scan, and the scan times are about 4 times greater at 600 X 600. Your best bet would be to scan at 300 PPI and do a bulk upsample of a large group in Irfanview using the Lanczos filter.

Your optical results will end up around 200 X 140 pixels. You can enlarge that a little, but you will start getting blurry images if you enlarge too much. Unless you can pick up the SCSI materials very inexpensively I dont think it makes much sense to not get something competent with 2400 optical resolution rather than 300. And it is going to take a lot more time than you probably anticipate to scan a large number of negatives just to get thumbnails.


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## pattycaker (Jul 4, 2005)

Hi I have one of this same scanners and it is definately SCSI NOT for the parallel port.
It takes very nice scans BUT alas it is not compatible with XP last I read up which makes me sad. Mine is sitting there not in use and I am thinking of getting an older machine PC to put Win 98 on just so I can use it. 
Did you try it in the parallel port and not blow up anything? just curious.


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## john1 (Nov 25, 2000)

Hi pattycaker,

I didn't know that it wouldn't run with WinXP. I am still using Win98
and i will probably have a 98 machine for a very long time, although
i do have an XP machine which i am still getting used to.

If you don't decide to get yourself an older machine just for this
scanner, would you consider selling it ?

I did not try the parallel port on the machine, i don't want to
damage it at all, i have no idea why its there.

I am still looking for some way to get mine working.

Regards, John


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## slipe (Jun 27, 2000)

*pattycaker*

If your SCSI card is working with XP you should be able to get the scanner up and running. Go to umax.com and select download software. Say you have a Powerlook II scanner and XP. You will find the download for MagicScan 4.5. You will also find a download for a registry fix  I assume it is required to get things running on XP as I never had to download a registry fix to get my S12 to work with MagicScan on Win98SE. There is a link to instructions for the registry fix and another link to the actual registry fix download.

I couldnt get the link to work for the instructions on the US site. It seems I always ended up on the UK site for issues with my scanner anyway. The UK site has full XP instructions plus drivers for the Umax SCSI card if that is what you are using as well as the registry fix.

This is a short primer on MagicScan: http://scantips.com/umaxms.html


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## laobow (Oct 23, 2005)

Both ports on the back are scsi. There used to be a 25 pin standard for scsi then the larger 50 pin connector. By providing both you can use either to connect to the computer and also you have the possibility of passthrough to add other devices to the SCSI chain.
I would recommend to use the 50-pin one. You will more easily find cables and connectors for this, I think it is more reliable, and I think there were two conventions for the pinout of the 25 pin one with a possibility of damage if the wrong variant was used (though one variant was very rare).

The transparency adaptor (lighted lid) you have was probably an optional extra. If you want to do serious scanning of slides or negatives I think you would be better off with a dedicated slide/film scanner but this solution should work for you.

I have a Umax U1220S and it works on XP. (I am using XP Pro SP2).
There are some wrinkles to getting it working.

First you've got to get the scsi card working. I am not using the one which came with my scanner but an Adaptec AH-1520B ISA card which I already had. A PCI card might be better as your computer may not have a legacy ISA slot and it may be better supported by Windows - but I doubt PCI SCSI would be faster as I don't think the scanner will come near to exceeding the throughput of the ISA SCSI.
Basically you run a cable from the SCSI card to the scanner and put a terminator (a kind of resistor pack to stop reflections of the signals) on the other scsi port on the scanner (assuming you are not chaining any other devices in the SCSI chain).

1. Might need to power the scanner on before booting - though I don't. This is a pain if you do and also may mean that you are tempted to leave the scanner powered on a lot - shortening the lifetime of it's lamp. When the lamp dies that is probably the end of the scanner.
2. Might need to change the SCSI ID number of the scanner (an identifying device number in the range 0-7 probably set by a little wheel or dial on the back of the scanner) . The SCSI card software may only recognize certain ID numbers or may be set to skip scanning some of the numbers to speed booting.
3. Might need to install ASPI drivers (perhaps just for the Umax software). 

Direct Windows support

Windows XP supports my scanner directly but I think it won't support yours because it is not listed at support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q293356

Basically, I power the scanner on and in the Device Manager I right click to 'Scan for hardware changes'. The scanner then appears as an Imaging Device in the device manager and also as an icon in My Computer.
If I double click the icon in My Computer I am led through a short wizard which lets me make scans.
It is very simple to use and quite powerful but does not have all the features and flexibility of the Umax scanner software.

I will post another message soon on getting the UMAX software to work in Windows XP


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## laobow (Oct 23, 2005)

I previously had the Umax 1220S software working under XP but recently discovered it was broken. 
The good news is I found solutions for the various problems I encountered.

There are 3 basic variants of the Umax software open to me - though I don't know about your scanner:
1) Vistascan V2.41? (preferred by some people over the newer versions but I am not trying it)
2) Vistascan V3.55su (I notice some .INF files in that package do mention the S6E so I am guessing it should work for you)
3) MagicScan 4.7 (Umax site implies I should stick with V4.5 for my scanner but 4.7 seems to work - perhaps they just haven't tested it). 
MagicScan is the more advanced software with the most user control.

Installation
Overall the installation and uninstallation programs seem troublefree. Only the Vistascan one requests you reboot after install - though getting the scanner recognized probably does anyway. The installation programs default to install in folders in C:\ but that default location can be easily overridden to install in C:\Program Files\
There is a considerable choice of languages to install (including east asian languages).
It may be best to install Vistascan _after_ MagicScan (that is a guess - but it is what I did).
After installing Vistascan I suggest using msconfig to disable the Vista Access system tray component (see potential issue below.. you don't think you lose anything significant by disabling it and you will gain some more free system resources).
[How to: From Start menu select 'Run'. Type msconfig and 'OK'. Select 'Startup' tab. Scroll down. Uncheck 'UMAX VistaAccess'.]

On my system the Vistascan components seem to work after installation.
The MagicScan 4.7 ones did not until I set Compatability mode to 'Windows NT 4.0 (Service Pack 5)'
[How to: Navigate to the installation folder and right click each .exe in turn. Select 'Properties'. Then the 'Compatability' tab. Check the 'Run this program in compatability mode for' box and select 'Windows NT 4.0 (Service Pack 5)']

Here are some of the issues and problems you may encounter and what I believe are the solutions for them:

Vistascan:

Problem - 8 entries for the scanner in the Device Manager
Solution: A small registry fix from Umax.

Problem - Trashcan icon on Desktop moves out of place and message appears:
Error
Shell_NotifyIcon Fail
and not all System Tray icons appear.

Solution: It is a problem with the Umax scanner.
See: support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q319008
They say "This issue may occur if you installed a UMAX VistaScan scanner and you configured the VistaAccess program (that is included with the UMAX VistaScan scanner) to automatically load from the Windows Startup folder." and suggest removing it from the Startup folder.
"The Cause:
An application that displays an icon in the system tray has partially died. The system tray icon is no longer there, and the app does not know it, but it keeps trying to update the icon for some reason. When it fails, it displays the "Shell_NotifyIcon Failed" message."
[This didn't happen to me at first but I did have this problem later - so I stopped it running at startup]

Problems - Error messages on starting Umax applications such as:
Unhandled Exception #32757 (Could not load description string; <owl/except.rc> not bound?). C:\WINDOWS\UD32.DLL
File C:\WINDOWS\UD32.DLL not found!
Load file C:\WINDOWS\VUD32.DLL error!
Scanner Driver has not been found or install.

Did you execute dragdrop.exe in the MagicScan folder out of curiosity? 
If you did then you need to reboot.

Problem - MagicScan applications try to start the scanner test utility and that cannot find the scanner.
The solution was to set the Compatability mode to Windows NT 4.0 (Service Pack 5). None of the other compatability mode settings solved this issue.
I set the compatability mode on all the MagicScan 4.7 programs.

Problem - MagicScan has subsidiary windows like the Scanner Control Window and they can be minimized but the 'X' icons to exit them are greyed out.

Solution: They can be opened and closed by ticking/unticking their entries in the 'Window' menu of the main panel.

Problem - I don't want to leave my scanner on all the time the PC is on.
Solution: A short test showed so long as the scanner was on during boot you could power it off later. Then when you need it, power it back on and the Umax programs still seem to work.
This conserves the scanner lamp on models like mine which do not have a facility to disable it.

One other thing to note is I found more legacy scanner information at the UMAX UK and German web sites than the US one... though the situation may have changed.

Hope that helps.


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## john1 (Nov 25, 2000)

Hi loabow,

Yes, very helpful.
I did not know that SCSI ever used a 25 pin D connector.
And i had wondered about the lid, cos although it is obviously Umax
and made for the job, the hinges don't look right somehow, sort of
like they're the wrong ones ... but they're not. So yes, it was
almost certainly an optional extra.

I am still trying to get together the stuff i need to do this,
and it might take me a while yet.

Many thanks for your advice and insight on this stuff.
I will probably refer back to this when i get the necessary hard
ware together.

Regards, John


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