LaserSoft Imaging

LaserSoft,

Can you confirm that SilverFast 6 and the Nikon Super Coolscan 4000ED (Firewire) should work using a Dual 1 ghz DDR PowerMac and 10.2.1? All I get is scanner not found and I have tried everybody's advice. Others appear to be successful with non-dual CPU Macs. Some advice would be most appreciated. Thanks

Rick H.

We have little experience with dual CPU MACs and Nikon scanners, hence I cannot guarantee that it will work. However, problems should occur during scanning only. The process of finding a scanner in the startup phase should not be dependend on a second CPU.

Are you sure, you have the latest version of SilverFast installed ?
I would also recommend, that you contact the support team at [url]support@silverfast.de[/url].

Eric.

I installed the latest Ai demo 6.0.1d23. In fact, again today I deleted any and all occurances of silverfast and nikon on my computer, downloaded a fresh copy of Ai and installed. I restarted and opened Photoshop 7. Import---NikonM----No Scanner Found. Same with the standalone program.

Please help

Rick

I would strongly recommend to contact the support team as soon as posible.

Eric.

Heard from the support team who directed me to "new" Nikon drivers. I installed these as directed in place of the SF installed NikonM/Nikon combo. Restart and still no scanner in Photoshop and standalone.

The only thing non-stock on this computer are a couple of added hard drives, added memory and an added SCSI card. Nikon is recognised fine by v**s**n. SF-SE works fine with Epson 2450 Firewire Flatbed scanner.

Mystery. Thank, Rick

Lasersoft report that they do not have a new version dual CPU/DDR G4 PowerMacs to test Ai on. It seems that Ai6 for Nikon Super Coolscan 4000ED works on earlier dual macs. Is there anybody with this setup that can report success or faiilure with Ai on the new PowerMacs using 10.2.1? With any scanner? I'd be most grateful.

Thanks, Rick

Tried the new version: 6.0.1d25 and it still doesn't work.

This issue of getting Silverfast for NikonM to work with the new Dual CPY/DDR G4 Powermacs seems more involved than I thought it would be.

So far, I haven't found a single new Dual/DDR G4 user to say that it works for them with the Coolscan 4000ED Firewire. At least then I'd know it was my setup.

Any ideas Lasersoft? Thanks, Rick

zhemgang wrote:This issue of getting Silverfast for NikonM to work with the new Dual CPY/DDR G4 Powermacs seems more involved than I thought it would be.

So far, I haven't found a single new Dual/DDR G4 user to say that it works for them with the Coolscan 4000ED Firewire. At least then I'd know it was my setup.

Any ideas Lasersoft? Thanks, Rick

Rick,

I can't comment directly on the Nikon 4000ED but do have a new dual 1.25 DDR Mac with 2gb of ram. I use the Polaroid SS120 both Firewire and SCSI work fine. I also tried my SCSI only SS4000 and it to works fine in 10.2.1 The implications here are that it's a Nikon only issue which doesn't really surprise me - Gawd awful Maid module is probably at its work again!

BTW: v**s**n talks direct to the hardware and so doesn't need the Maid module. Maybe LaserSoft should stop using the Maid module. At least that way they would have total control over the how and when SF will be Nikon friendly. As things stand LaserSoft get the rap for every screwup Nikon make.

Lasersoft advises that Nikon Scan not be installed. I don't know if Lasersoft is using Nikon's Maid or adapting these to their own needs. I presume the latter. It seems that the Silverfast, Nikon 4000ED and non-dual G4s work. That seems odd, but I have no idea about what the Maid really does or why it wouldn't work on the dual. It's also an issue that Lasersoft have been so quiet and Nikon are taking their sweet time. Makes me wonder if there's more to the problem. Yikes, did I make an expensive mistake? There are a lot of funny issues between pre-Jaguar, 10.2 and 10.2.1. v**s**n functions fine, but it doesn't do as good a job as Nikon Scan. I wanted to try Silverfast. Funny, SF for my Epson 2450/Firewire works fine. It's all very annoying. Best regards, Rick

zhemgang wrote:Lasersoft advises that Nikon Scan not be installed. I don't know if Lasersoft is using Nikon's Maid or adapting these to their own needs. I presume the latter. It seems that the Silverfast, Nikon 4000ED and non-dual G4s work. That seems odd, but I have no idea about what the Maid really does or why it wouldn't work on the dual. It's also an issue that Lasersoft have been so quiet and Nikon are taking their sweet time. Makes me wonder if there's more to the problem. Yikes, did I make an expensive mistake? There are a lot of funny issues between pre-Jaguar, 10.2 and 10.2.1. v**s**n functions fine, but it doesn't do as good a job as Nikon Scan. I wanted to try Silverfast. Funny, SF for my Epson 2450/Firewire works fine. It's all very annoying. Best regards, Rick

Rick,

In dead simple terms (somebody frm LaserSoft might provide a better explantion) the Maid module is a component of Nikon driver - the interface between the nice GUI and the hardware. Everyting you do passes through Nikon Maid. With a lot (not all) of scanners LaserSoft don't need to use any of the original vendors driver components but Nikon hardware is differerent. As things stand LaserSoft install a copy of the Maid module (I don't know if it's modified). This means that if the Maid module isn't up to handling the new dual processor Macs or OS X10.2.x then SilverFast is stuck in the same hole as NikonScan. I know there was an earlier problem with dual processors on the SilverFast side, but that was fixed by ignoring the second processor - Nikon Maid may not yet be smart enough to do that yet!

We can only hope that someday a software engineer at Nikon will get out of bed and decide - no more playing hokey pokey with the users head.

iLyons,

Thanks for the explanation. It's sad that companies such as Nikon make so little an effort to garner the goodwill of Macintosh users. I should think in the end it costs them sales. The Mac user base can't be a tiny fraction of the film scanner market.

Well, the sad truth is that I've had to install on an XP machine until Lasersoft and Nikon give me an alternative. I have a reasonable (1.6 ghz P4 with 512 GB RAM) Windows XP machine and Nikon Scan 3.1.2 runs horribly.

This pretty much wraps it up. If Lasersoft requires Nikon's Maid driver, and Nikon's driver doesn't work with new DDR Macs, we are some weeks away from a cure.

"We certainly apologize for the delay in the release of Nikon Scan 3.1.4
for Mac OS 10.2, as the 10.2.1 update was issued right in the middle of
final QA testing on our update, my counterparts in Japan had to start
testing again with 10.2.1, as there were minor changes in 1394 support for this OS, which we suspected might cause difficulty on a specific class of Apple CPU.

Barring any additional updates from Apple, we expect our update for
Nikon Scan to be issued within the next 4-6 weeks."

Good luck

Rick,

Barring any additional updates from Apple, we expect our update for
Nikon Scan to be issued within the next 4-6 weeks."

So far as Nikon goes it will be a never ending series of fixes. I reckon Nikon have some of the best hardware on the market, but they have hobbled it by the Maid module. Even minor changes to the OS can render the Nikon dead!

I had a Nikon scanner for 3 years and other than a silly software issue that Nikon were determined to say was hardware it worked flawlessly. However, during the same period we went from Win 98, 2K and then Me. Each change meant the scanner became a paper weight for months. Now the same thing is happening on the Mac front.

So far as LaserSoft is concerned they are snookered by the need to use the very code that keeps getting broken. This really isn't doing SilverFast any good and sooner or later that dependency will have to go. May be licencing agreements prevent this but even so something needs to be done.

If we wouldn?t use the MAID modules, we had to implement all that stuff ourselves. Well, we could do that, but it?s still a lot of work.

The worst thing is, that we would loose the functionality of dICE, since ASF has lincenced dICE to Nikon for use in the MAID modules.

Eric.