[sane-devel] Gradually increasing scan times

[Karl O. Pinc]

Hi,

My question is probably not directly related to sane,
although who knows?

I've got a HP Scanjet model 6100C (product C2520A) attached
to a Adaptec 1524 scsi card.  Right now I'm running the
latest RedHat 7.2:

xsane-0.82-3.1
sane-backends-devel-1.0.5-4.1
sane-backends-1.0.5-4.1
xsane-gimp-0.82-3.1
sane-frontends-1.0.5-2

Linux mofo.meme.com 2.4.18-27.7.xsmp #1 SMP Fri Mar 14 05:52:30 EST 
2003 i686 unknown

One upon a time, it worked.  (I recall somewhere in the early .60
xsane releases, maybe.)  As time has gone by it's taken longer and
longer to scan.  The delay is 'between' the little noises the scanner
makes.  Right away there's a noise (where the scanner resets?)  Then a
pause.  Then another nose a bip-bop (where the scan head zeros?)  Then
a noise when it first scans and then moves the scan head back to the
resting position.  The pause between the noises gets longer and
longer.  After installing the latest kernel upgrade it now takes about
10 minutes or so to go through the whole cycle and, this is new, the
resultant image is black.

I don't use the scanner much at all, and leave the machine up for
months.  I used to be able to rmmod the aha152x module and then
modprobe it and the delays would go away.  I figured there was a
memory leak (mozilla/galeon seems to have one) or something somewhere.
Now, the scanner is unusable.  (And it's tax time.  :)

FWIW, for quite a while I've had to start xsane twice.
The first time it always says
that no device is found.  IIRC, maybe, that when I first got the
scanner working I didn't have this problem.  The scsi II cable is a
little long, going from the floor to the desk but....  There are also
2 other devices attached to the same scsi chain, and they seem to
work.  There's no messages in dmesg or /var/log/messages.  (Except for
the bus reset related stuff from my module reloading.)

What's the best way to approach fixing this problem?  I once had faith
that HP devices would continue to work, but their printers now seem to
break regularly.  Is this a hardware problem?  The lamp is old and
weak or a sensor needs the dust removed?  It doesn't have that sort of
feel.  (It has the feel of scsi hell.)  I've tried disconnecting some
of the other devices on the bus (and adding an active terminator) to no 
effect.

(I've just downloaded the RH 9 sane and xsane source rpms, but I don't
know if they'll compile without a lot of hassle and I'm not confident
that will fix the problem.)

hp.conf is:

scsi HP C2520A * * * * *

modules.conf is:

alias scsi_hostadapter aic7xxx
alias scsi1 aha152x
options aha152x io=0x340, irq=10, sync=0

Here's some relevant /var/log/messages output:

Apr 10 21:27:34 mofo su(pam_unix)[26943]: session closed for user kop
Apr 10 21:27:50 mofo kernel: scsi : 1 host left.
Apr 10 21:28:34 mofo kernel: aha152x: BIOS test: passed, detected 1 
controller(s)
Apr 10 21:28:34 mofo kernel: aha152x: resetting bus...
Apr 10 21:28:35 mofo kernel: aha152x1: vital data: rev=1, io=0x340 
(0x340/0x340), irq=10, scsiid=7, reconnect=enabled, parity=enabled, 
synchronous=disabled, delay=1000, extended translation=disabled
Apr 10 21:28:35 mofo kernel: aha152x1: trying software interrupt, ok.
Apr 10 21:28:35 mofo kernel: scsi1 : Adaptec 152x SCSI driver; 
$Revision: 2.4 $
Apr 10 21:28:36 mofo kernel:   Vendor: HP        Model: 
C2520A            Rev: 3644
Apr 10 21:28:36 mofo kernel:   Type:   
Processor                          ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Apr 10 21:28:36 mofo kernel:   Vendor: YAMAHA    Model: 
CRW4260           Rev: 1.0q
Apr 10 21:28:36 mofo kernel:   Type:   
CD-ROM                             ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Apr 10 21:28:36 mofo kernel: Attached scsi generic sg3 at scsi1, 
channel 0, id 4, lun 0,  type 3


Thanks.


Karl <kop at meme.com>
Free Software:  "You don't pay back, you pay forward."
                  -- Robert A. Heinlein