No drivers for UMAX astra 1220s scanners SCSI card?

[Guest Kommunistipupu]

I have a scanner. It's UMAX ASTRA 1220S. It is said to be supported

by SANE. But it doesn't work, so I think it is the SCSI card:

 

An ISA/SCSI card was shipped with the scanner. And I'm using

Mandrake 8.1.

 

I've searched and I've searched the net for some drivers for the

Umax UDS-IS11/ISA scsi card that came with my UMAX ASTRA 1220S scanner. Here's what it says about the scsi card on umax webpage:

 

"

The UMAX UDS-IS11/ISA is an OEM of Domex's (aka DTC Technology's) DTC-3181LE SCSI card. The full drivers for the DTC-3181 card are available from Domex's web site. According to Domex's specifications, the 16-bit ISA card supports SCSI-II, an asynchronous transfer rate of 7MB/sec, synchronous burst transfers of 10MB/sec, and has full driver support for DOS (ASPI), Windows 3.x (ASPI), Windows 95 (MPD) and Windows NT (MPD). The SCSI card uses passive termination and has an external 25-pin D-sub connector. We understand that the same card (or the DTC-3151x variant) is OEM'd by: Relisys, Avision, Epson, HP, IBM and Mustek (this information is from the US company DTC, who manufacture related products).

"

 

So the way I understand this, is that the card is manufactured by

DTC (data technology corporation) which uses the brand DOMEX.

And the cards real name is DTC-3181LE. And that this card is shipped

with various scanners from companies like Umax, Epson, HP and Mustek?

 

There is a linux driver for the DTC-3180 SCSI card (which is PCI I think?)

but nobody made a driver for poor old DTC-3181 (which is ISA I think?)

 

Question 1:

 

What is the difference between an PCI SCSI card and an ISA SCSI card.

Atleast on my computer I put the card to the PCI-slots (are there

different slots for ISA?). Is ISA or PCI just some internal way of

handling things or are the slots really different?

 

Question 2:

 

Does anyone know anyone who has this scanner and has gotten it to

work on Mandrake. I'm using Mandrake 8.1 and if there are drivers

for this card in Mandrake 9, please tell me, so I'll switch to that.

(Otherwise I'm not going to waste 3 CD:s on it. I've read so much

hardware troubles from people who were quite happy with 8.1.

And I'm little short on cash also... )

 

Question 3:

 

I watched a few tutorial on writing an SCSI-device driver. The tutorial

said something like "This tutorial is simple, the program made in this

tutorial will work better on a simple ISA SCSI card which usually

come with the scanners. It is much harder to code a driver for

a real SCSI card".

 

So... I believe this DTC-3181 is just like that. An ISA SCSI card that

came with the scanner, and it's really half of an SCSI card. One thing

is this Plug and Play... I think that the card is Pnp. Does that matter

anyway?

 

How easy would it be to write a device driver for this card? And why

hasn't anybody done it yet? I understand there are a lot of different

cards out there, and not everyone can be supported right away.

How different are the drivers anyway? There's a common standard

SCSI-2. How big will the changes be? And could I do it my self in

couple of months with just a bit effort? I have only 5 years of

programming experience (mostly opengl and 3d anyway... but I once

made a PC-speaker keyboard jazz program which was very low-level.)

 

 

 

Thank you for the answers. And for reading this long question...

 

Hopefully in ten years we have an Operating system that works...:)

[Counterspy]

There are significant differences between ISA and PCI cards/slots. ISA is older and precedes in mobo design the PCI cards/slots and is no longer even being put on newer motherboards. I can't help you with question 2. As far as writing a device driver is concerned, this is one of the more complicated programming challenges. The O'Reilly Company has an online book here: http://www.xml.com/ldd/chapter/book/ . You could have a look at this. It seems to me that your solution is to get a PCI SCSI card which you can switch to another motherboard when you decide to upgrade. Adaptec is the company with the largest presence in this area. Find them here: http://www.adaptec.com/ . Your scanner manufacturer should be able to help you select a card from the many different models available. There are other SCSI card manufacturers which you can find using Google.

 

Counterspy

[Guest Kommunistipupu]

Thanks Counterspy for your answer. But I looked at the prices of SCSI

cards and they were ranging from 40 to 1200 euros. And most adaptec

cards were over 300 euros. That would be like buying a new scanner

nowadays...

 

So, I didn't give in to dome driver that I thought wasn't made...

 

I searched the net for "astra 1220s linux" and I found this small tutorial

on how to activate the right module for the linux kernel.

I really didn't know anything about these "modules" before I started. But

now it seems to me that they are parts of the kernel that are left out

because the computer has to keep the kernel in its memory all the time.

So, to make the kernel smaller, they have these modules that can be

dynamically loaded during the running of the kernel.

 

Check

 

http://www.sunbirds.com/support/Astra1220S.shtml

 

for the original tutorial, but in case that page goes out someday, I'll

write the main issues here, so that it hopefully will be in some kind of

archives that you can search (I'm not sure if these messages are

archived anywere, but...)

 

from any terminal, type the following:

 

insmod g_NCR5380 ncr_irq=255 ncr_addr=0x2C0 dtc_3181e=1

 

This will install the module that will find the Domex (or DTC) card.

I'm not sure if that address varies from computer to computer, but for

me it was the same as in the original tutorial, so maybe it's the same

no matter where you put the card.

 

Then there's the SANE and Xsane programs... What I did as said in the

instuctions was to install the latest version of sane-backends and also

frontends. But now I think that atleast for Mandrake 8.1 this isn't

necessary. Nowadays the Umax patch is in included in the SANE, so

you don't have to install them neither. On Mandrake 8.1 removing the

original sane-backends will result in removing also Kdevelop, so I think

you don't have to remove the originals. The originals will be in /usr/bin,

and the new executables (if you download the newest version, unpack

it to a directory, in that directory type: "./configure" then "make" and

then "make install") will be in /usr/local/bin. (I edited the two last

lines of /etc/profile to get that directory in to my PATH...)

 

You can check, if you have install a newer sane by typing on the

terminal:

 

sane-find-scanner

 

If your Umax scanner is found you'll propably get it to work without

installing anything.

 

Then as a normal user type: xsane

 

Or run Xsane from the menus or however you want to execute it.

 

After a while of waiting for xsane to find your scanner, if there's a list

of devices, choose Umax. After that youre ready to go and acquire

your first preview. Atleast I found out that Xsane is not perfectly

fit for the scanner (or there are some bugs somewhere) - once when

taking a preview my scanner suddently started keeping the same

horrible noice as if it were locked (like rat-ta-tat-ta-rat-ta-tat-ta...).

This can seriously damage the scanner so press cancel immediately if

this should happen.

And then also when I first tried to scan a whole A4 with 300 dpi resolution

it scanned for a while but in the end it crashed so badly that not even

the cursor moved and I was forced to hard reset...

Since then my linux has been getting all these warning messages about

some busybox and insmod not exited normally... but it might or might

not be the xsanes fault...

because when trying to figure out how the get the scanner automatically

recognised at boot, I tried to insert the g_NCR stuff to /etc/modules.conf

with poor result...

 

So the thing I don't know yet, is how to get that particular module to

load at boot time? It seems to me that it only screwes up my system

and doesn't really load the module.

 

Hopefully this helps some Umax Astra 1220s owners...

[Guest Kommunistipupu]

...I forgot to mention that you can make two textfiles which can then be

executed in order to scan.

 

With your favourite editor like Gedit ot Abiword or what ever...

write a file like this:

 

insmod g_NCR5380 ncr_irq=255 ncr_addr=0x2C0 dtc_3181e=1

sane-find-scanner

 

and save it as a .txt file with a name like scan1.txt

 

(I also made a text file named scan2.txt and wrote there:

"/usr/local/bin/xsane" but that was because I installed the latest Xsane

there and didn't want to use the old xsane in /usr/bin/)

 

Then I copied the textfiles to /usr/bin/

 

So when you login as a user, open up a terminal and type:

 

su root

(then type your root password and press enter)

scan1

su your_username_here

scan2

 

This ofcourse has the disadvantage of having to give your root

password to all your users who wish to scan with the computer. But

atleast you don't have to write the g_NCR stuff all over again everytime

you open up your computer...

 

So if anyone knows why it doesn't work when I write the name

of the module to /etc/modules.conf? I allready read the man page about

modules.conf and insmod and insmod_ and modprobe and I've tried

to write the following to the modules.conf:

 

insmod g_NCR5380 ncr_irq=255 ncr_addr=0x2C0 dtc_3181e=1

(which obviously didn't work)

 

g_NCR5380 ncr_irq=255 ncr_addr=0x2C0 dtc_3181e=1

(which didn't work)

 

options g_NCR5380 ncr_irq=255 ncr_addr=0x2C0 dtc_3181e=1

(nope.)

 

post_install g_NCR5380 ncr_irq=255 ncr_addr=0x2C0 dtc_3181e=1

(AARGH...)

 

so how does it work anyway???

[Counterspy]

I would look at 9.0 which may support that scanner. You should have PNP turned off in the bios when you installed. Check the Mandrake Hardware List to see if it is listed and the Linux Hardware Database. They are here and here: http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/hardware.php3 , http://lhd.zdnet.com/ . If you get no satisfactory results repost this message with Kernal in the title so our group of kernel people will see it.

 

Counterspy