Expression 636 SCSI to Firewire or USB?

[Stoonroon]

My SCSI-equipped Expression 636 worked fine with an adaptec PCI card on my old G4. But on my G5 this set-up does not work. I've recently tried a Ratoc FR1SX Firewire to SCSI converter. But SilverFast (v 6.4.4r2) is not seeing the scanner, whether directly or through Photoshop CS2.

In the Mac hardware profiler, the firewire port is seeing the FR1SX (which is attached directly to the SCSI port on the scanner) but there is no sign of the scanner itself. This suggests a hardware problem (I guess) so I suspect a newer version of the software would not make a difference. (Is this assumptions correct?)

I know it's old, but I hate to part with the scanner-software combo that has served me so well. Does anyone know of a conversion system that works (perhaps USB instead of firewire)?

Thank you very much

[LSI_Heidorn]

Dear Stoonroon,
the behaviour of the Ratoc that you describe *could* be okay. Is the Power LED on the Ratoc lit ?
If not, then the EPSON is not delivering enough power via SCSI-TERM and you need an external power supply...

Nevertheless we cannot know if this setup will ever work- The cases where we support the Ratoc are custom made ( for the Heidelberg High End Scanners ), everything else is subject to trial and error as we do not have the resources to re-write and test all our drivers.

Did you try to use the Ratoc Setup Utility to try both modes ( SIM-SCSI on and off ) ??

Greetings and good luck !

Nils Heidorn

[Stoonroon]

Dear Nils,

The light on the RATOC adaptor does turn on, so I got into the set-up utility. I didn't see a switch explicitly labeled as "SIM-SCSI on and off," but there was a check box labeled "SIM Driver mode." In the default setting the box was checked. I tried unchecking it and trying again. No luck. The scanner is not seen.

I have another question that may be moot given the above, but I'll ask anyhow: If the adapter was working properly, then in the Mac Hardware profile should the scanner appear as a SCSI device or as a Firewire device?

Many thanks for your advice and your help.

Regards,

[LSI_Heidorn]

Dear Stoonroon,
the scanner should show up as Firewire device, but as it sounds you are out of luck !

I will ask our support if they ever heard of someone beeing successful in trying this.

best regards,

Nils

[bakarena]

Hi,

How about SCSI speed ?

I think you should try setting "SCSI speed value" from 20MB/sec(default) to either 10 MB/sec, 5MB/sec, or Async in the RATOC utility.

I have succeeded running RATOC & Silverfast /OSX10.3 with my Epson Expression 1600 using 10MB/sec setting.

[Stoonroon]

Dear Nils,

Many thanks for your help.

Regards,

Richard Benish

[LSI_Heidorn]

Dear Richard,
please see the post above from "bakarena", maybe you can try the same !

Good luck,

Nils Heidorn

[Stoonroon]

Perhaps I gave up too soon. I bought a new scanner (Canon 8800F) which works quite well with a minimum of setup headaches. Perhaps someday I'll try the possibility mentioned by bakarena. At the moment, I'm not in the mood to go back and set up the old scanner with the suggested adapter settings. I've already discovered that the Canon is faster than the Epson was, and to try a setting that only MIGHT work on the Epson at HALF the speed...Time to move on.

Thanks again for all the help.

[LSI_Heidorn]

Dear Richard,
thanks for the update !

best regards,

Nils Heidorn