Provided by: libsane-common_1.2.1-5_all bug

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 safety 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

SEE ALSO

       sane(7),    sane-find-scanner(1),    sane-scsi(5),   sane-mustek_usb(5),   sane-gt68xx(5),
       sane-plustek(5), sane-mustek_pp(5), sane-ma1509(5), scanimage(1), xscanimage(1)

       /usr/share/doc/libsane/mustek/mustek.CHANGES
       http://www.meier-geinitz.de/sane/mustek-backend/

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)