Can't use old Acer flatbed scanner

I have a very occasional need for a scanner, so I dug up an old
Acer ScanPrisa 640P parallel port model. By all accounts, this
model never came with a driver for Windows XP. All searches for
an XP driver pointed to the software MiraScan, with a few
mentioning a separate inf file, namely EPP2K.inf. I downloaded
both and tried it out with an old 32-bit Athlon XP machine that
has a parallel port, running WinXP SP2. It worked, though it was
a bit temperamental.

Next, I connected it to my newer PC, also Win XP SP2, which has a
new but untested PCI-Parallel port card. The card driver
installed without a hitch and shows up as LPT3. When tested with
a DMP, the port works flawlessly, but refuses to detect the
scanner.

Adding new hardware using the EPP2K.inf file makes it show in
Device Manager as "Color FlatbedScanner". Properties show it as
an EPPSCANNER connected to LPT3, but the status is always
"Unavailable".

To sum up: The scanner works with a computer that has an
integrated parallel port. It doesn't work with a PCI-LPT card.
The PCI-LPT card works with a DMP. Can anyone help please?

Pimpom wrote:
I have a very occasional need for a scanner, so I dug up an old
Acer ScanPrisa 640P parallel port model. By all accounts, this
model never came with a driver for Windows XP. All searches for
an XP driver pointed to the software MiraScan, with a few
mentioning a separate inf file, namely EPP2K.inf. I downloaded
both and tried it out with an old 32-bit Athlon XP machine that
has a parallel port, running WinXP SP2. It worked, though it was
a bit temperamental.

Next, I connected it to my newer PC, also Win XP SP2, which has a
new but untested PCI-Parallel port card. The card driver
installed without a hitch and shows up as LPT3. When tested with
a DMP, the port works flawlessly, but refuses to detect the
scanner.

Adding new hardware using the EPP2K.inf file makes it show in
Device Manager as "Color FlatbedScanner". Properties show it as
an EPPSCANNER connected to LPT3, but the status is always
"Unavailable".

To sum up: The scanner works with a computer that has an
integrated parallel port. It doesn't work with a PCI-LPT card.
The PCI-LPT card works with a DMP. Can anyone help please?


Maybe the driver is insistent it be on LPT1 ?

The document here doesn't suggest it is necessary, but it's all
I can think of.

http://www.lavalink.com/dev/fileadmi...pci_manual.pdf

Maybe the higher level software, doesn't like it if the hardware
is moved to another parallel port ?

Paul

Paul wrote:
Pimpom wrote:
I have a very occasional need for a scanner, so I dug up an
old
Acer ScanPrisa 640P parallel port model. By all accounts, this
model never came with a driver for Windows XP. All searches
for
an XP driver pointed to the software MiraScan, with a few
mentioning a separate inf file, namely EPP2K.inf. I downloaded
both and tried it out with an old 32-bit Athlon XP machine
that
has a parallel port, running WinXP SP2. It worked, though it
was
a bit temperamental.

Next, I connected it to my newer PC, also Win XP SP2, which
has a
new but untested PCI-Parallel port card. The card driver
installed without a hitch and shows up as LPT3. When tested
with
a DMP, the port works flawlessly, but refuses to detect the
scanner.

Adding new hardware using the EPP2K.inf file makes it show in
Device Manager as "Color FlatbedScanner". Properties show it
as
an EPPSCANNER connected to LPT3, but the status is always
"Unavailable".

To sum up: The scanner works with a computer that has an
integrated parallel port. It doesn't work with a PCI-LPT card.
The PCI-LPT card works with a DMP. Can anyone help please?


Maybe the driver is insistent it be on LPT1 ?

The document here doesn't suggest it is necessary, but it's all
I can think of.

http://www.lavalink.com/dev/fileadmi...pci_manual.pdf

Maybe the higher level software, doesn't like it if the
hardware
is moved to another parallel port ?


Thanks for the reply, Paul. Right now, I'm entertaining some
guests. I'll follow up when I get the chance and report the
results.

"Pimpom" wrote in message
...
I have a very occasional need for a scanner, so I dug up an old Acer
ScanPrisa 640P parallel port model. By all accounts, this model never came
with a driver for Windows XP. All searches for an XP driver pointed to the
software MiraScan, with a few mentioning a separate inf file, namely
EPP2K.inf. I downloaded both and tried it out with an old 32-bit Athlon XP
machine that has a parallel port, running WinXP SP2. It worked, though it
was a bit temperamental.

Next, I connected it to my newer PC, also Win XP SP2, which has a new but
untested PCI-Parallel port card. The card driver installed without a hitch
and shows up as LPT3. When tested with a DMP, the port works flawlessly,
but refuses to detect the scanner.

Adding new hardware using the EPP2K.inf file makes it show in Device
Manager as "Color FlatbedScanner". Properties show it as an EPPSCANNER
connected to LPT3, but the status is always "Unavailable".

To sum up: The scanner works with a computer that has an integrated
parallel port. It doesn't work with a PCI-LPT card. The PCI-LPT card works
with a DMP. Can anyone help please?



I've found that with older hardware, Win2k drivers typically work in XP
If you cannot find a win2k driver I'd not bother with the device

On Sat, 25 Jun 2011 18:49:12 +0530, "Pimpom"
wrote:

I have a very occasional need for a scanner, so I dug up an old
Acer ScanPrisa 640P parallel port model. By all accounts, this
model never came with a driver for Windows XP. All searches for
an XP driver pointed to the software MiraScan, with a few
mentioning a separate inf file, namely EPP2K.inf. I downloaded
both and tried it out with an old 32-bit Athlon XP machine that
has a parallel port, running WinXP SP2. It worked, though it was
a bit temperamental.

Next, I connected it to my newer PC, also Win XP SP2, which has a
new but untested PCI-Parallel port card. The card driver
installed without a hitch and shows up as LPT3. When tested with
a DMP, the port works flawlessly, but refuses to detect the
scanner.

Adding new hardware using the EPP2K.inf file makes it show in
Device Manager as "Color FlatbedScanner". Properties show it as
an EPPSCANNER connected to LPT3, but the status is always
"Unavailable".

To sum up: The scanner works with a computer that has an
integrated parallel port. It doesn't work with a PCI-LPT card.
The PCI-LPT card works with a DMP. Can anyone help please?


If I remember correctly I had problems with an acer negative/film
scanner. The solution was to use Mira software which succeeded but
then on next use failed to recognise the scanner. Deleting software
and re-installing overcame this, but only temporarily. I persevered as
I wanted to do a batch of scans but after that decided it was too much
hassle.

km

On 25/06/2011 14:19, Pimpom wrote:
I have a very occasional need for a scanner, so I dug up an old
Acer ScanPrisa 640P parallel port model. By all accounts, this
model never came with a driver for Windows XP. All searches for
an XP driver pointed to the software MiraScan, with a few
mentioning a separate inf file, namely EPP2K.inf. I downloaded
both and tried it out with an old 32-bit Athlon XP machine that
has a parallel port, running WinXP SP2. It worked, though it was
a bit temperamental.

Next, I connected it to my newer PC, also Win XP SP2, which has a
new but untested PCI-Parallel port card. The card driver
installed without a hitch and shows up as LPT3. When tested with
a DMP, the port works flawlessly, but refuses to detect the
scanner.

Adding new hardware using the EPP2K.inf file makes it show in
Device Manager as "Color FlatbedScanner". Properties show it as
an EPPSCANNER connected to LPT3, but the status is always
"Unavailable".

To sum up: The scanner works with a computer that has an
integrated parallel port. It doesn't work with a PCI-LPT card.
The PCI-LPT card works with a DMP. Can anyone help please?


Is there a way to change the mode of the pci-parallel port card?
Standard parallel ports built-in to motherboards can usually be
set to 'Output only', 'Bi-directional', 'EPP' and 'ECP' modes
in the BIOS.
For a scanner, 'output only' would fail to work and sometimes
you have to try each of the other 3 modes before things start
working.

HTH,
--
Rob

Pimpom wrote:
I have a very occasional need for a scanner, so I dug up an old
Acer ScanPrisa 640P parallel port model.

Are you sure that it is parallel port?
Or does it jst look like that?
HP domestic scanners were actually SCSI on a D25 port, but they had
their own plugin AT scsi card. AFAIK all proprietary.

"Joel" wrote in message
...
terryc wrote:

Pimpom wrote:
I have a very occasional need for a scanner, so I dug up an
old
Acer ScanPrisa 640P parallel port model.

Are you sure that it is parallel port?
Or does it jst look like that?
HP domestic scanners were actually SCSI on a D25 port, but
they had
their own plugin AT scsi card. AFAIK all proprietary.

I agree with you that most if not all older generation scanners
usually
are SCSI scanner, and I have never heard of Parralell scanner.

Maybe there's some SCSI emulation involved, I don't know. But, as
I said in my opening post, it works with my older computer's
parallel port.

The mobo of that computer is a Biostar M7NCG 400 using an nVidia
nForce2 chipset and, AFAIK, a standard parallel (LPT) port.