On 16 Jan 00, at 17:21, Phillip Franklin wrote:
> Dave, Shawn, and Chuck & all of others interested,
>
> Basically I agree with Chuck's analysis of why different hardware
> manufacturers each decide to support a particular platform or not. And I
> disagree with Shawn in his final analysis as to hardware driver compared
> to twain support. Twain is not a hardware driver but acts more like a
> port or configuration for applications to find a particular device.
> Basically it was a standard conceived right after the code of Windows
> 3.0 was made open to developers. Everyone thought it was a good idea to
> use a common "port" or "interface" to find a particular device in
> Windows. This was not Microsoft's decision but an independent developers
> action. Although twain loads into windows similar to a hardware driver
> it is not a device and is not recognized as a hardware device by the
> Windows device manager. In order to be recognized by Windows as a Device
> it must use one of the hardware interrupts available to the device
> manager. Certainly it can share the interrupt of the SCSI host
> (assuming of course it is a SCSI device). This is not the case for a
> SCSI drive since they are loaded with out the need for a particular
> hardware driver since all SCSI disk drive devices use a standard written
> within the Windows operating system. Thus it is quite possible for SCSI
> to find a particular device such as a Scanner, it (SCSI) can neither
> operate the scanner nor find the scanner from an application. Therefore
> TWAIN was written. However if after TWAIN finds the device it certainly
> can not operate the device. Hence the need for a driver. So some
> programmer must design a driver to load into the operating system be it
> Windows 3.x/95-98/NT/or 2000. Therefore there can be a conflict if the
> driver was only written for one version of Windows.
Sorry, but I have to disagree just a bit here. I am aware of how Twain evolved,
and how it fits into this puzzle, although my original post may not have been
too clear. (it was hastily retyped from one written earlier that was lost after
my daughter hit the reset button -arggh.. time to disconnect that...;-)
Using my current Acer 620ST as an example, these are they only
differences between win95 and NT:
the SCSI driver, and various registry entries associated with them.
The Twain driver/application talks to the ASPI layer of my SCSI card, looking
for the scanner device. Once finding it, it knows how to control the scanner.
This twain control application is identical in win9x and NT (this judged by
comparing the uncompressed source files and .inf files - I don't actually have
win9x to verify this).
Anyway, my intent was to offer a possible solution based on my experience
with installing many SCSI scanners over the years, not to get into somewhat
off-topic tech discussions...
> So what is the wise purchaser of a scanner to do to insure future
> comparability amongst newer operating systems? My answer. Simply look
> for software computability before you make your purchase. Don't assume
> anything. Buy from an experienced manufacturer of scanners. This ES-10
> was Olympus's first approach (maybe their last?) into this market. In
> order to to get my old UMAX 1260 flatbed (circa 1993) compatible to Win
> 95, I had to go to UMAX and request a firmware upgrade. They did make
> this available at no charge. Therefore I would not feel hesitant to
> buy another expensive flatbed from UMAX. It seems that Minolta is
> supporting their film scanners as new versions of OS's are becoming
> available. If Olympus chooses to not do this then one should not buy
> their scanners or any other computer hardware devices from them. As
> simple as that.
This one I agree with completely. I have found HP, UMAX, and Epson to be
good in this respect. I would not recommend Microtek, as even their latest
scanners seems to use a 16bit twain application interface, which leads to
instability and poor performance.
Shawn & Janis Wright
swright@xxxxxxxxx
http://Zuiko.sls.bc.ca/~swright
(Olympus List Archives)
< This message was delivered via the Olympus Mailing List >
< For questions, mailto:owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >
< Web Page: http://Zuiko.sls.bc.ca/swright/olympuslist.html >
|