[sane-devel] getting any sort of Umax PowerLook 2100XL to work anymore?

[abel deuring]

Am 18.02.19 um 14:08 schrieb David Melik:
> On 2/17/19 10:38 AM, Ondrej Zary wrote:
>> On Wednesday 30 January 2019 06:24:08 David Melik wrote:
>>> Earlier I'd been asking if the new USB Umax PowerLook 2100XL is
>>> supported.  It wasn't clear, and may or may not involve someone or any
>>> new user trying to write drivers.  Now I found out even the old (SCSI-2)
>>> one doesn't work with kernels since March 19, 2018... at least not for
>>> my Adaptec PCI SCSI-2 card (AHA-2920 or something.) The Linux kernel
>>> just started removing drivers for plain/classic PCI hardware (and other
>>> still-used old hardware, for years) despite brand new
>>> system-/logic-/main-/mother-boards still being made with plain/classic
>>> PCI slots.  Is there any way I can recompile the old drivers (fdomain)
>>> for new kernels? ... or should I just pay Umax to upgrade a scanner to
>>> USB, or maybe buy a USB one, with the chance of it not ever working?
>>> (maybe same situation unless I install an old/obsolete OS version.)
>>>
>>>
>> Looks like your AHA-2920 card is based on Future Domain chipset
>> (AHA-2920A). fdomain driver was removed probably because nobody wanted
>> to remove its scsi_module.c dependency:
>> https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/10291777/
>>
>> I already fixed some old SCSI drivers to prevent them from being
>> removed but such major driver modifications require testing on real HW.
> 
> Is there a different SCSI-2 card I might be able to find/use to get the
> PowerLook 2100XL working again?

A commonly used SCSI adapter was the Adaptec 2940, controlled by the
Linux kernel driver aic7xxx. I'm seeing offers for used 2940 cards on
the German Ebay site for less than 10 Euro.

But be aware that there were different types of connectors used for the
SCSI bus. See for example

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCSI_connector#External

IIRC, the 2940 has the connector that is shown as the second from top in
this picture:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Scsi-connectors.jpg.

(Well, it has actually the "female" counterpart for the connector shown
in the image.)

Other adapters had a "Centronics"-like connector, as shown at the bottom
of the image linked above.

The third common variant was the DB-25 connector, as shown here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SCSI_Mac.jpg

I can't remeber which type of connector was used for the AHA2920, so be
aware that you might also need to buy a SCSI cable with the appropriate
connectors on both ends. Again, Ebay and similar websites should give
you lots of offers for used SCSI cables for small money.

Oh, another possible pitfall: There was also a 16 bit variant oof the
SCSI bus used, mostly for disks. This bus uses 68-pin connectors, while
the 8 bit variant uses 50 pin connectors. There were variants of the
2940 for the 8 bit bus as well as the 16 bit bus. ISTM that the latter
has a "W" in its name, like 2940W or 2940UW.

Make sure that you get the 8 bit version.

Abel