[sane-devel] Normal or destructive behaviour when SANE starts?

[Alisdair]

I have managed to install both SANE and a USB Agfa Snapscan e20 scanner.
The sanner seems to work fine and so does SANE,
but all is not total sweetness and light.

The first time SANE is started, whether through Xsane or scanimage two things happen:

1. The scanner spends about 15 seconds making rather worrying grinding noises (the scan 
head does not move at this time);

2. Xsane can't communicate with the scanner; and scanimage returns this:
     scanimage: sane_start: Error during device I/O

After the 'grinding' noise has stopped the scanner head moves back and forward a couple of 
cm (sounds fine) and everything settles down. From this point onwards Xsane has no 
problems with the scanner for the rest of the session, including when Xsane is stopped and 
restarted - the scanner remains silent when Xsane starts, while its indicator light 
flashes (this is what I would take to be 'normal').

Has anyone had any experience of this problem, or can point me in the right direction to 
fix it? Obviously I'm a bit worried that over time the initial start up might be 
stressing/damaging the scanner mechanism.

Regards and thanks, Alisdair