[sane-devel] your-firmwarefile.bin

[Olaf Meeuwissen]

Hi Torfinn, Jono,

Torfinn Ingolfsen writes:

> On Fri, Aug 7, 2020 at 2:31 AM Jono <bitrat at fastmail.fm> wrote:
>>
>> My scanner is:
>>
>> ______________________________
>> $ lsusb
>> .
>> .
>> Bus 003 Device 013: ID 04b8:0121 Seiko Epson Corp. GT-F500/GT-F550 [Perfection 2480/2580 PHOTO]
>> ==================================
>
> First of all: it does seem wrong that SANE tries to use the snapscan
> backend (see sane-snapscan(5) man page) with your scanner. Since it is
> reported as a Epson scanner it should be using one of the epson
> backends
> (sane-epson(5) or sane-epson2(5) for the man pages).
> Unfortunately, your scanner is also listed as not supported here:
> http://sane-project.org/sane-mfgs.html

Sorry to tell you wrong but there are several EPSON scanners that speak
a protocol different from EPSON's ESC/I protocol.  The latter is
supported by the epson, epson2 and epsonds backends and the epkowa and
utsushi external backends.  Some of those "odd-ball" scanners are
supported by the snapscan backend.

Actually, this one is also supported by the epkowa external backend via
the use of a non-free "interpreter" that converts between protocols.

> Try 'scanimage -L' to get SANE to check for scanners it recognizes.
> see the man page scanimage(1) for more: 'man scanimage'.
>
>> Where is the firmware file for my scanner?  Does SANE upload and
>> overwrite the scanner's current firmware?  It should currently work
>> on Windows, so I don't want to brick it.
>
> Some scanners need to have their firmware uploaded every time they are
> powered on.

Correct.

> The firmware is not distributed by SANE for obvious reasons. If you
> have such a scanner, you will have to find and extract the firmware
> file from the (Windows) driver / install yourself. (I had a SnapScan
> scanner once, there was a SnapScan_XXX.bin file in a directory of the
> windows install; this was the firmware so I just copied it and
> configured SANE to use it)

You should also be able to find it in the RPMs that you can download via

  http://download.ebz.epson.net/dsc/search/01/search/?OSC=LX

The firmware file does not depend on the gcc version or CPU type.  You
are looking for a file matching esfwXX.bin, IIRC, where the XX is a two
digit hexadecimal value.

> Hope this helps a bit.

Hope this helps (a bit more ;-),
--
Olaf Meeuwissen, LPIC-2            FSF Associate Member since 2004-01-27
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