[sane-devel] Installing an Epson RX-620 on Debian

[Mike Brodbelt]

Hi,

I'm trying to set up an Epson Scanner with SANE, and having minimal
success thus far. Having looked at numerous documents by now, this list
seemed like my best hope...

I have an Epson Stylus Photo RX620 (all in one device, details at
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1768177,00.asp for anyone
interested), and I've installed the current version of sane in Debian
unstable. The recommended sane backend for this is the "epkowa" backend,
which is part of the libsane-extras package.

Running "sane-find-scanner" gives:-

<snip>
found USB scanner (vendor=0x04b8 [EPSON], product=0x0811 [USB2.0 MFP])
at libusb:1:4
  # Your USB scanner was (probably) detected. It may or may not be
supported by
  # SANE. Try scanimage -L and read the backend's manpage.
</snip>

Which all looks OK so far. However, "scanimage -L" throws an error with
"no scanners identified".

With debug logging on, using "export SANE_DEBUG_EPKOWA=128", running
scanimage -L shows:-

=========================================================
<comments snipped>

[epkowa] sane_init, >usb<
[epkowa] attach_one_usb()
[epkowa] SANE EPKOWA Backend 1.16.0-3 - 2005-06-29
[epkowa] attach(, 3)
[epkowa] attach: opening
[epkowa] attach_one_usb(libusb:1:4)
[epkowa] SANE EPKOWA Backend 1.16.0-3 - 2005-06-29
[epkowa] attach(libusb:1:4, 3)
[epkowa] attach: opening libusb:1:4

<more comments snipped>

[epkowa] sane_get_devices()

No scanners were identified. If you were expecting something different,
check that the scanner is plugged in, turned on and detected by the
sane-find-scanner tool (if appropriate). Please read the documentation
which came with this software (README, FAQ, manpages).
[epkowa] sane_exit
=========================================================

I'm running 2.6.14, with the scanner supported by libusb. The sane docs
(such as they are) suggest that the backend should automagically find
supported devices. Looking at the source code for the libsane-extras
package, the device ID is listed:-

=========================================================
  0x810,                        /* PM-A900 / Stylus Photo RX700 */
  0x811,                        /* PM-A870 / Stylus Photo RX620/RX630 */
  0x814,                        /* PM-A700 */
=========================================================

The epkowa backend does want binary firmware for some models, but
apparently not for mine, so I don't think that can be the problem either.

Anyway, I'm now officially stuck, and the SANE documentation doesn't
seem to have much on what to do when you have a known supported device
that the backend won't "see". If anyone has got something like this
working before, or can shed any light, it'd be much appreciated.

Mike.