Silverfast for Howtek Scanners and Mac OS 10.5 Leopard

[djtaylor]

Please give an update on Mac OS 10.5 Leopard compatibility for Silverfast running Howtek scanners. A software update is overdue.

Thanks,

David

[LSI_Luebker]

Dear David,

the Howtek D4000/4500 are working properly with OS X 10.5, as we have not yet completed the testing so they are not shown
on the website yet. If you got another Howtek Scanner please try the Demo.

[djtaylor]

So you are saying that there will be an official update to Mac OS 10.5 in the near future. Is that the case?

Thanks,

David

[LSI_Luebker]

Dear David,

I just talked to the testing team and it is already working with 10.5, we will change this on the website accordingly.
Please note that it is always advisable to try the demo to see if your particular setup is working.

[DJ]

I think what djtaylor is asking is whether the Howtek version has been updated to be compatible with 10.5 Leopard, rather than if the previous version just doesn't crash, to which the answer is regrettably "No".

The Howtek version doesn't appear to have changed for a long time, and is still a PowerPC binary, so I can't believe it has been changed at all for "Leopard Compatibility". There is the same Universal Binary launcher which is used for all versions, but the Howtek part behind doesn't appear to have been changed for a some time.

Having said that, it does run under Leopard, albeit under Rosetta emulation, and seems to function ok, apart from the odd occasion when the dialog boxes get corrupted and you'll need to restart. I have run it successfully with my Macbook Pro and a Firewire->SCSI converter under Leopard.

Sadly, these drum scanner versions of Silverfast are the among the most expensive to buy, but receive the least support due to the smaller demographic of these type of scanners.

[LSI_Luebker]

Dear DJ,

thank you for the post. As you just wrote SilverFast does run fine on Leopard and to realise that we did some extensive correction. You are right that SilverFast itself is running with Roseta but it has proven very solid like that, so please contact us if you got any issues here.
We are currently working on our next major release which will be universal binary