[sane-devel] Support for UMAX AstraSlim 600

[neel roy]

Hello Ralph,

Sounds interesting project. Will give it a try. I had looked at SANE project before sending this mail so my hope was that I get to something on Linux which would be bonus to actually getting that thing working :) Let's see. If I find something I will let you know for sure.

Thanks for your help,
-Neel

From: Ralph Little <skelband at gmail.com>
Sent: Thu, 23 Dec 2021 12:17:44
To: neel roy <neelsmail at rediffmail.com>
Cc: "sane-devel at alioth-lists.debian.net" <sane-devel at alioth-lists.debian.net>
Subject: Re: [sane-devel] Support for UMAX AstraSlim 600

Hi,

On 2021-12-22 9:10 p.m., neel roy wrote:
> Hello Ralph,
>
> Thanks.
>
> > OK, it looks like this machine shares the USB id with Astraslim and
> the Astraslim 6000
> You mean 600? Anyway, I think that was my try to change conf
> "/etc/sane.d/artec_eplus48u.conf" (I think).
>
>
> > Unless a developer has access to one of these machines and the will
> to take it on, supporting it is unlikely in the near future. :(
> Is it not possible I will look at the code and try to figure out? I am
> trying to reuse that scanner; don't want to create e-waste (Climate
> Change Nut ;-)). Do have couple of decades of programming experience
> although in windows.
>
> -Neel.

I'm completely with you on the e-waste thing! We have a lot of old stuff
here that we keep going regardless of what the manufacturers would
prefer. ;)

So the first thing that I usually say about trying to get a new scanner
working with SANE is to try to determine if an existing backend would
suffice. It is indeed possible that the artec_eplus48u backend would
work but it is by no means guaranteed that the protocol is the same.
Even scanners that look completely identical sometimes have completely
different innards.

I'm not at all familiar with this family of scanners. On our supported
scanner page (http://www.sane-project.org/sane-mfgs.html) we list
"Astraslim" and "Astraslim 6000" as sharing the same USB ids as your
scanner, both of which are not currently supported. Looking around the
web, I can only find references to Astraslim AS6000 which might be the
same thing.

What I would be tempted to do is try to locate a Windows driver for the
machine and capture some traffic during a scan to see if it matches with
the protocol supported by the artec_eplus48u backend.
I don't believe that we have any documentation on that protocol though:
you would have to look through the backend code to get a feel for what
you expect to see in the Wireshark trace. That would at least tell you
that the backend had a chance of working with the scanner.

If it looks radically different, then you will either have to figure out
if a different backend will work or you would have to start a fresh one.
One thing you might have to do (entirely at your own risk I might add)
is crack it open and see what chippery is inside. This may or may not
help you identify what is driving it. Some of the older scanners had
special scanner-on-a-chip drivers what we have backends specifically
targeting, whereas you might just find a generic microcontroller, some
RAM and a motor driver in which case you get no clue as to what the
protocol might be.

Looking at the manpage for the artec_eplus48u backend, it supports the
GT6816 driver chip so you might find that device inside. That manpage
also notes that the currently supported scanners required a firmware
file to be loaded. You would normally get that from the Windows driver,
probably from the original installation disk, if you have it:
http://www.sane-project.org/man/sane-artec_eplus48u.5.html

Hopes this helps.

Cheers,
Ralph
 
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