Ubuntu Manpage: sane-mustek - SANE backend for Mustek SCSI flatbed scanners (and some other devices)

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 II CD, ScanMagic 600 II SP
Paragon MFC-800S, 800 II SP
Paragon MFS-6000SP
Paragon MFS-8000SP
Paragon MFS-1200SP, MFS-12000SP
ScanExpress 6000SP
ScanExpress 12000SP, 12000SP Plus, Paragon 1200 III SP, ScanMagic 9636S, 9636S Plus
Paragon 1200 LS
ScanExpress A3 SP
Paragon 1200 SP Pro
Paragon 1200 A3 Pro
Paragon 600 II EP
Paragon 600 II 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 interface. The only non-SCSI scanners that have
some support at this point is the 600 II N and 600 II 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
PARALLEL PORT SCANNERS. Other parallel port scanners are not supported by this backend but you may be
successful using the Mustek parallel port backend mustek_pp, see sane-mustek_pp(5). USB scanners are
also not supported by this backend but the ma1509, mustek_usb, gt68xx, and plustek backends include
support for some of them, see sane-ma1509(5), sane-mustek_usb(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, IMMEDIATELY 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/share/doc/libsane/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@alioth-lists.debian.net. You can get the debug output by setting the
environment variable SANE_DEBUG_MUSTEK 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 PARALLEL PORT SCANNERS  below).
       For  SCSI  scanners, the special device name must be a generic SCSI device or a symlink to such a device.
       The program sane-find-scanner(1) 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 device name.

The supported options are linedistance-fix, lineart-fix, legal-size, buffersize, blocksize, strip-height,
disable-double-buffering, disable-backtracking, and force-wait.

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 horizontal 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 maximum 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.
Unfortunately, it also increases scan times. With current SCSI adapters and drivers this option shouldn't
be needed any 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 implemented for all scanners). This option may be necessary with the 600 II N or
when scanimage(1) 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) possible 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 system, 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 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.

PARALLEL PORT SCANNERS

This backend has support for the Paragon 600 II EP and Paragon 600 II 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 connected 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 II N are 0x26b, 0x2ab, 0x2eb, 0x22b, 0x32b, 0x36b,
0x3ab, 0x3eb. For the 600 II EP use one of these: parport0, parport1, parport2, 0x378, 0x278, 0x3bc.
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 frontends such as scanimage(1) and xscanimage(1) setuid root (generally not recommended for security
reasons) or, alternatively, access this backend through the network daemon saned(8).

If the Mustek backend blocks while sending the inquiry command 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 CCFL 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 SANE_CONFIG_DIR below).

       /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane/libsane-mustek.a
              The static library implementing this backend.

       /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane/libsane-mustek.so
              The shared library implementing this backend (present on systems that support dynamic loading).

ENVIRONMENT

       SANE_CONFIG_DIR
              This  environment  variable  specifies  the list of directories that may contain the configuration
              file.  On *NIX systems, 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 directories are searched after the explicitly specified directories.  For example, setting
              SANE_CONFIG_DIR to "/tmp/config:" would result in directories tmp/config, ., and /etc/sane.d being
              searched (in this order).

       SANE_DEBUG_MUSTEK
              If the library was compiled with debug support enabled, this  environment  variable  controls  the
              debug level for this backend.  Higher debug levels increase the verbosity of the output.

              Value  Description
              0      no output
              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 SANE_DEBUG_MUSTEK=4

AUTHOR

       David Mosberger, Andreas Czechanowski, Andreas Bolsch (SE extensions), Henning Meier-Geinitz, James Perry
       (600 II 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/.

                                                   13 Jul 2008                                    sane-mustek(5)