Silverfast 8 for Minolta 5400 and 5400II

[LSI_Ketelhohn]

Dear Kelly,

You can get your free SilverFast HDR upgrade on our website.

Windows 8 will be tested when the final version is available.

kind regards,
Arne Ketelhohn.

[T Jones]

Okay, it looks like it is about time to ask this question again.

I LaserSoft going to provide a software to drive a KM 5400 (not II) a. At all? b. in the foreseeable future?

Thanks,

Tony

[LSI_Ketelhohn]

Dear Tony,

unfortunately I do not have an new information on this device.

kind regards,
Arne Ketelhohn.

[TheAudioDoc]

Kain,

I've been following the related thread on Dyxum for a while now here: http://www.dyxum.com/dforum/how-to-run-old-minolta-scanners-on-vista-7_topic80321_page1.html. I have been dual booting between Win XP 32 bit and Win 8 64 bit. As most photographers are aware, many other photo editing programs are forcing the switch to 64 bit. I continue to do my scanning in XP, though it is becoming more and more inconvenient, as I find myself doing most everything else in Win 8 as I gradually update software and hardware. My Minolta 5400 II and Silverfast 6.6 are one critical remaining glitch in my migration. As I am not hopeful that 64bit support is coming I decided to give the workaround a try.

First anyone with Win 8 should be aware that you have to disable driver signature enforcement in advanced boot options, otherwise you will get the 3rd party driver signature error message. I now have Win 8 properly registering my 5400 II, however SF 6.6 will still not connect to my scanner. Obviously I'm missing something here. You did say that SF will work with this .inf file. I wondering what is missing ?

Regards,

Kelly

The drivers supplied by Minolta work just fine with Silverfast and do not need to be replaced or rewritten. Below you will find the procedure to make virtually any Minolta scanner work in Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8 both 32-bit and 64-bit allowing the scanners to work with Silverfast:

1) Find the name of the driver file the Minolta software installed that isn't working. This is usually in the folder c:\windows\inf and is named DSXXXX.inf where the X's are numbers. For the Dimage 5400 gen 1 it is DS2890.inf. Copy this file to your desktop for editing.
2) Open the file and search for [Manufacturer]. Add ,ntamd64 at the end of the %Mfg% line so %Mfg%=Models becomes %Mfg%=Models,ntamd64.
3) Copy the entire [Models] section and paste it underneath itself renaming the tag to [Models.ntamd64]. Now you should have both a [Models] and [Models.ntamd64] section that are identical.
4) Save the driver file.
5) Now point the scanner in device manager to your new driver file (it may be in other devices and just need to update driver and manually choose driver location as your new driver inf).

This process not only allows all scanners to work with Silverfast, but also allows the original Minolta software to work in Windows 7 (32 and 64) as well. This process works for old Nikons that don't have Windows 7 drivers as well once you locate the actual driver file in c:\windows\inf.

Hope that helps.

[TheAudioDoc]

Update to my previous post (which has not been approved yet): I was curious -- installed the dimagescan utility and that seems to work OK in Win 8. Now Silverfast connects to the scanner, however there are bugs. The scan progress bar doesn't function correctly. After scanning is complete, Win 8 open's its picture viewer and SF crashes (I may be able to turn that off in preferences somewhere). If I use Multi-exposure, the scanner hangs and SF crashes. Of course I suppose these problems could be expected as the software isn't 64 bit compatible.

I confess to being disappointed. The 5400 and 5400 II were listed as being available with SF 8 "down the road a piece" (which is Win 8 and 64 bit compatible to my understanding). I purchased SF 6.6 based on that. Unfortunately, here we are a couple miles down that road, and it still has not happened. The good thing is that I built my computer to dual boot between XP and Win 8 on separate SSDs.

Of course I am aware that the root of these issues is Minolta dropping the photographic division and even worse, Sony dropping the scanner business into "file 13"!

Regards,

Kelly

[TheAudioDoc]

The Minolta Dimagescan 5400 II is a very good scanner and I am very pleased with the results I'm getting with Silverfast HDR Suite 6.6 in Windows XP 32 bit. However it will soon be two years since I purchased it (after SF 8.0 had been released) with the hope that one day I would get the upgrade to 8.0. What is the current status?

Most of my work, other than scanning with the Minolta is now down in Windows 8. What are the chances of SF 8.0 for the Minolta operating in Win 8 64 bits? Or at least being able to use SF 6.6 in Win 8 64 bit? I have been able to use my scanner in Win 8 with the original Minolta Dimagescan utility in Win 8 64 bit using the method mentioned here in an earlier post by Kain Anderson.

Regards,

Kelly

[LSI_Ketelhohn]

Dear Kelly,

We are still investigating possibilities to support this device on modern operating systems.
Unfortunately we require access to special hardware features.
That makes this a difficult task.

kind regards,
Arne Ketelhohn

[TheAudioDoc]

I get the RSS feed for SF version updates. I noticed that the latest one http://www.silverfast.com/versions-history/en.html shows a bug fix for the 5400 which surprised me because I had not seen any announcement that SF8 was available for our scanners so I checked and indeed it is, however for Mac OS only.

I contacted sales via email and was told that SF8 will hopefully be available for the 5400 II in the first quarter of 2014. I hope that means for Win 8 64 bit. Hope that is indeed true.

Regards,

Kelly

[jparenas7107]

Hi,

I just want to find out if there is any news about Silverfast 8 for Minolta DIMAGE Scan Elite II. I am currently unable to use my scanner with Silverfast 6.6 after upgrading to Mac OS X Mavericks.

I hope us users of this great scanner can see Silverfast 8 soon enough.

Thanks.

Joseph

[LSI_Ketelhohn]

Dear Joseph,

Our developers are making progress writing the new drivers.
The version should be ready soon.
However I still have no exact date due to the testing still necessary.

kind regards,
Arne Ketelhohn.

[TheAudioDoc]

Just checking in. I'm still dual booting -- Win XP to Win 8.1, but pretty much only when I need to do some scanning. It sure would be nice not to have to boot to XP especially with support ending for XP in one week!
My son has given me his old Macbook Pro which is running OS 10.92 Mavericks. That won't run SF 6.6!

Are we any closer to having 64 bit support? Either with Win 8 or Mavericks?

Regards,

Kelly

[LSI_Ketelhohn]

Dear Kelly,

We now have a Mac (only) version for the Minolta 5400 but not the 5400 II.
Unfortunately it has proven to be quite difficult to adjust the drivers for this device.
But we continue to look into this matter.

Kind regards,
Arne Ketelhohn.

[jparenas7107]

Hi,

This is just to let you know that I'm still patiently waiting for Silverfast 8 for Minolta 5400 II so I can start scanning on Mavericks.

Thanks.

Joseph

[LSI_Ketelhohn]

Dear Joseph,

Thank you for your message.

Unfortunately the SilverFast 8 version for the Minolta 5400 II is not available yet.
Our developers are still working on support for this device.

Kind regards,
Arne Ketelhohn.

[jparenas7107]

Dear Joseph,

Thank you for your message.

Unfortunately the SilverFast 8 version for the Minolta 5400 II is not available yet.
Our developers are still working on support for this device.

Kind regards,
Arne Ketelhohn.

Hi Arne,

Is there any progress on this? I sorely miss Silverfast for my Minolta 5400 II. It's a shame since it is a pretty good scanner and I can no longer get the most out of it.

Kind regards,

Joseph