On Thu, 10 Dec 1998 18:47:19 -0700, Garth Wood <garth@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> jammed
all night, and by sunrise was overheard remarking:
> At 06:33 PM 12/10/98 -0800, you wrote:
> >At less than $400, and rebate offers abound, the HP Photosmart provides a
> >most capable "gizmo" for digital processing.
> True, but there are things about the Photosmart that give me pause. Thing
> number one: it uses a *proprietary* SCSI interface card, which just
> eats room on my motherboard that I can't afford.
You don't have to use that card -- the scanner has a normal SCSI bus and
works in conjunction with other SCSI devices, if you have a proper SCSI
card with ASPI support and all. My Dad has one of these photo scanners
on the same SCSI bus as his flat-bed scanner, works great.
>I *really* would've liked it if HP could've seen their way clear to
> using standard SCSI card
The kind of SCSI cards HP bundles with their scanners are standard.
Basically, they're using some ancient Adaptec or similar chips, usually
for the ISA bus, usually programmed I/O (no DMA, much less bus mastering)
. While these cards can work with other devices, HP DOES NOT SUPPORT
THIS. "Does not support", in this context, means "no help". It might
work, but it's not their problem to help you make it work.
> -- I could've just diasy-chained the thing into my ther peripherals
> and forgotten about it.
Chances are you can. But that would require you setting the right SCSI
device address on the scanner, hooking the cabling properly, making sure
it's not too long (especially a concern with the "Mac-style" 25-pin
cabling, which has a drastically shorter range than real 50-pin SCSI),
making sure termination is done right, etc. These are also things HP
would prefer not to have to help you with. Not to mention all the
complaints from folks who expect their UltraSCSI buses to still run a
UltraSCSI speeds when some joker hangs a 6' Mac-style SCSI cable off the
external port. And, of course, most PC users don't have SCSI anyway.
So that's the story of the "scanner SCSI cards", in general. HP actually
ships some of the better of this bottom-of-the-barrel SCSI card, I know
they were, in fact, using Adaptecs at least at one point (my Dad had two
different ones at one point). I got some no-name thing with my UMAX
1200S scanner, so cheap the damn thing didn't even work properly under
Windows NT, even though it came with NT drivers. Since then, that
scanner has run just dandy on my Symbios 53C825 SCSI card, then my
"IoMega Buz" card (different machines involved).
--
Dave Haynie | V.P. Technology, Met@box Infonet, AG | http://www.metabox.de
Be Dev #2024 | NB851 Powered! | Amiga 2000, 3000, 4000, PIOS One
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