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Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: Ral-Clan on March 20, 2012, 04:35:22 PM
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Just a story about giving old tech new life rather than throwing it out, for anyone who has a few minutes to kill...
I used to use an old MicroTek Scanmaker E3 flatbed SCSI scanner (from about 1997) on my Amiga 2000 with BetaScan. This is a large flatbed scanner which was sold as a decent quality scanner for the average user. I got a lot of use out of it on my Amiga.
When I finally had to switch to a PC after my A2000 failed in 2008 (I'll get it fixed one day) I thought it was the end for this scanner. I put it in mothballs along with an identical spare I had picked up cheaply as backup.
Many times I came close to throwing out (or donating to a Thrift store) these two old Microtek scanners. After all, they were just gathering dust and I felt guilty about contributing to house clutter. However, something always made me hold onto them for a little while longer.
For my new PC, I had bought an HP USB three-in-one printer/scanner/copier. The benefits seemed obvious: it was smaller, easier to connect, and supported by Windows as a plug-and-play device, etc. etc.
For a while I used that, and it was fine until recently when I had to do some work where image quality was a very important consideration. I do visual art and needed to scan some watercolour paintings in order to add text to them in a paint program.
I scanned them with the USB HP scanner, but was disappointed with the performance! Subtle colours (like the light blue sky) were reproduced inaccurately (or just as white) no matter what settings I used. There was fringing around high contrast colours (almost like a white outline of single pixels). Also, when you "upped" the resolution of the scan (i.e. from 300dpi to 1200dpi) the quality of the scan was not really any better - sure there were more pixels, but it was no better than if I had just interpolated the image (i.e. upped the resolution in software). Lastly, when you zoomed in on an image, you could notice there was a slight jitter visible at the edges of shapes.
All of this I assumed was due to the limitation of the HP scanner's "consumer level" optics (this was a scanner intended for general home use).
So, my most immediate option was to take the images to a professional printing office to have them scanned (inconvenient, slow and costly), or buy a more professional USB scanner (expensive).
I had one more option which was worth a try: I bought an old Adaptec PCI SCSI card for $15, hooked it up to my PC and got the old SCSI Microtek scanner running. Next, I did some test scans.
WOW! What a difference. The MicroTek E3 had much better colour accuracy. The images seemed very real, the textures of the paper/paint were picked up well. There was no fringing between high contrast areas (an older, different type of optics?).
The MicroTek also and had no problem scanning at high (modern) resolutions. When scanning at 1200dpi the high resolution scans (i.e. 1200 dpi) were actually visibly better quality scans when the image was zoomed in (rather than just appearing interpolated as on the modern HP scanner).
I'm guessing that in the 1990s, when scanners were still an expensive and relatively new novelty for home users, there wasn't as thin of a profit margin as today and the manufacturers could still afford to put higher quality components inside their "consumer" lines. Today's consumer level scanners and printers are all about selling cheaply and in volume.
The E3 is a bit of a beast (large size) but when image quality is paramount - I'll be using this throwback to the 1990s! In fact one advantage of its large size is that it has an 8.5. x 14" tray - hard to find on today's consumer-level scanners.
There are a couple of other great things about this clunkier, older technology:
- It's user servicable! The glass on the flatbed can be removed easily so that you can clean both sides
- The light is a standard mini-flourescent tube you can buy at ANY hardware store - and again, it's easy for the user to replace. I noticed that on the modern scanner light is provided by white LEDs, which may contribute to the reduced image quality.
An added bonus of installing the SCSI card to control the old scanner is that I can now connect real AMIGA SCSI drives to this Windows XP computer and exchange data. I can even use WinUAE to format and setup up drives for use in a real Amiga.
I'm super glad I held onto this old scanner. I had felt guilty about keeping around "old junk" but am now glad I didn't toss the E3. I will be using it for all my important archival and artwork scans where image quality is paramount. It's saved me from buying a modern "pro-level" USB scanner (which I don't think could perform any better) and kept some electronics out of the landfill.
It's funny how my computer desk is starting to look once again like it did when I had an A2000 sitting there. I've got the PC all set up with my Wacom Graphics tablet from my Amiga 2000 and now this Scanner from my Amiga 2000 days. It's running a very nicely tweaked WinUAE setup which I use a lot for productivity work: OS3.9, Lightwave, Alladin4d, Bars & Pipes, DPaint, ImageFX, etc. etc. It's a very pleasant Amiga setup, but with access to more RAM and CPU speed! Oh and I've also got a 1541 drive hooked up to the PC for transferring stuff to my VIC-20.
Don't worry about the real A2000. It will be working again and setup up somewhere (if get some room) in the house so the two computers can colaborate on projects.
So the lesson: sometimes making careful choices about what "old junk" to hold onto can pay off. That - and - newer isn't always better (or "they just don't build them like they used to"). Haha!
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Awesome story! Would you mind uploading computer scanned pictures showing the difference between the two scanners?
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Awesome story! Would you mind uploading computer scanned pictures showing the difference between the two scanners?
Good idea! Since both scanners are hooked up to the PC I can do this and illustrate where colours do not reproduce accurately (and where fringing does occur because of the different types of optics).
It's not like the HP produces hideous images, it's perfectly acceptable for "regular" everyday use i.e. scanning your restaurant bill, etc. It's just that that in situations where you want true replication of the original source material for an important reason that you would choose the higher quality scanner (the older E3).
The differences may be subtle to some, but when you view the two scans side by side there is a difference. And when you spend hours painting an image or have an important family photograph to archive, you want to best quality.
I will make some comparison scans and post tomorrow...
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JFor my new PC, I had bought an HP USB three-in-one printer/scanner/copier.
"All-in-ones" are junk. Do many things, none of them well. I have yet to see any sort of "all-in-one" device that could come close to the quality of separate devices.
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"All-in-ones" are junk. Do many things, none of them well. I have yet to see any sort of "all-in-one" device that could come close to the quality of separate devices.
That is my default assumption, but I would have thought that in the eleven years between the manufacture of the MicroTek E3 and the HP all-in-one that technological advances in consumer-grade optics would have made the latter at least on-par with its ancestor. While I wasn't expecting miracles from the more modern scanner, I never expected that it would actually perform worse!
I'd be interested in hearing stories from anyone who has found a situation in which older technology outperformed its modern counterpart. These are always fun to hear.
I found this relevant blog post:
http://redoubtreporter.wordpress.com/2012/02/15/plugged-in-know-your-stuff-let-enough-be-enough/
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Yeah, all-in-ones are uniformly crap. I've yet to encounter one where this is not the case. (And crazily enough, from what I've seen, they've gotten worse with time, at least at the consumer-electronics price point.) HP's a prime offender in the printer/scanner market, too - their hardware isn't great, their software is a bloated pile of feces, and these days it's damn near impossible to install the drivers without getting the full suite of crap along with it.
Coincidentally enough, right after I read this thread this morning, I made a stop by the recycle center, where what should I see but a Microtek E3! Looks to be in good condition, so I set it aside and I'm gonna see what they want for it tomorrow.
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Yep, all-in-ones basically do everything halfway and nothing well.
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HP's a prime offender in the printer/scanner market, too - their hardware isn't great, their software is a bloated pile of feces, and these days it's damn near impossible to install the drivers without getting the full suite of crap along with it.
Yes I've seen this. You have to disable a lot of HP's stuff in the Windows startup, and even then there's too much.
Coincidentally enough, right after I read this thread this morning, I made a stop by the recycle center, where what should I see but a Microtek E3! Looks to be in good condition, so I set it aside and I'm gonna see what they want for it tomorrow.
Neat! I paid $150 for my first Microtek E3 with included SCSI card (bought used in 2001), then a few years later I picked up the second one as a "spare" for $8 (eight dollars!) at a Thrift store. A great scanner if you can get it for less than $20. Remember, if the bulb is not working it's a $5 replacement at most hardware stores (there's even a YouTube video on how to replace the bulb:
http://www.google.ca/url?q=http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3Dlz4WdmBxqXM&sa=U&ei=M9FoT-OpDOne0QGa8PjzCA&ved=0CDcQtwIwAA&usg=AFQjCNFAdk9BFSO8ud_yNJz5Z6mnuCClJA
And this scanner works fine on classic Amigas running BetaScan (free on Aminet) and ScanTek (shareware) software. I used it on my A2000 with an A2091 SCSI card.
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Heh, nice :) I don't have SCSI in my Amiga (or even in my PC,) but it looked like it has a parallel-port connector as well, so hopefully I can use that in the meantime. I've been wanting to get a scanner again for a while since I'm looking to finally start a webcomic this year, and this'd be awfully handy since I wouldn't have to save up for a new one...
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Heh, nice :) I don't have SCSI in my Amiga (or even in my PC,) but it looked like it has a parallel-port connector as well, so hopefully I can use that in the meantime. I've been wanting to get a scanner again for a while since I'm looking to finally start a webcomic this year, and this'd be awfully handy since I wouldn't have to save up for a new one...
That "parallel port" is actually a DB-29 SCSI pass-through (I'm pretty sure). So you won't be able to use it as a parallel port printer. I can't find the manual online, so I cant be sure of this, but I seem to recall that's what the port was (it looks exactly like a parallel port, though).
The ScanMaker E3 PLUS (note the word PLUS) can operate in both modes, I think (Parallel or SCSI).
I'm pretty sure you can get a cheap PCI SCSI card or and Amiga A2091 SCSI card on eBay for about $20 if you really want to bother getting into the world of SCSI (which has a learning slightly learning curve and can be finicky - but once set up is a nice interface protocol).
I'm using the Adaptec 2093B SCSI card in my Windows XP machine with this scanner.
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I think you can buy much better scanner today than MicroTek for its old price.
this reminds me of old LCD vs CRT debate. every technology has its disadvantages.
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I think you can buy much better scanner today than MicroTek for its old price.
this reminds me of old LCD vs CRT debate. every technology has its disadvantages.
For sure... And, honestly, I wonder how much better scan you'd get from the HP with a decent driver. Maybe try it under Linux, if it's supported by SANE. Most of the image issues sound like a combination of the image getting automatically jpeg compressed, and then color corrected and sharpened. It wouldn't surprise me if the scan software was bad enough to jpeg an image internally before exporting as a TIFF. :P
There are few things more infuriating than HP's drivers. They do all sorts of unexpected things "automatically." As mentioned above, just installing them usually gives you a host of adware, demo software, and updaters. And the drivers, themselves, aren't any more open about what they're doing once they're installed, either.
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I think you can buy much better scanner today than MicroTek for its old price.
this reminds me of old LCD vs CRT debate. every technology has its disadvantages.
Of course you can. But then you'd be comparing apples to oranges. I'm comparing a $150 consumer level scanner of the 1990s to a similarly priced consumer level scanner of today and saying that the E3 from 1997 beats the HP all in one from 2008.
I am not argueing that all old scanners are better than new ones. And I'm not arguing that my old E3 consumer level scanner is better than a modern prosumer level scanner (although I'm not convinced it's worse, either).
If you already have a SCSI enabled Amiga or a SCSI enabled PC and see a MicroTek E3 for $10 at at Thrift Store (or in the garbage for free) then it's very good value for the money, but I would not recommend anyone seek out 11 year old scanners on purpose. Surely the most elegant solution would be to simply buy a modern, prosumer level (high quality) USB scanner. Yes, of course I could have done this, but once you enter the prosumer realm you are talking about spending $300 and up (sometimes way up). While no doubt these new prosumer level scanners are good, I wouldn't automatically assume they are BETTER than the MicroTek (niether would I say the MicroTek is BETTER than these modern prosumer scanners).
In my case, I simply used what I already had at hand. With that, plus a very minimal investment ($15 for the SCSI card) I was able to give new life to an 11 year old scanner that outperformed my 2008 era scanner and acheive very nice scans. That in itself was rewarding.
As for the quality of the scans made by the MicroTek Scanmaker E3: the proof of the pudding is in the tasting. The image quality satisfies my critical eye. It's an optics issue in this case. While I'm sure the electronics are more advanced in the newer scanners, the optics (the glass, the mirrors, the light source, etc.) in the old E3 seem to be decent even by today's standards. I'm sure I would have been just as happy buying a modern $350 Epson USB dedicated flatbed scanner to get good images, but I have the combined satisfaction of having only spent $15, keeping a very useful piece of equipment out of the landfill, and having the added ability to read Amiga SCSI devices on my Windows PC.
As a bonus, this is one of the few scanners that is also supported by Amiga 68K machines. There aren't many scanners currently on the market that you can also use with your classic Amiga.
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I'm pretty sure you can get a cheap PCI SCSI card or and Amiga A2091 SCSI card on eBay for about $20 if you really want to bother getting into the world of SCSI (which has a learning slightly learning curve and can be finicky - but once set up is a nice interface protocol).
Yeah, to be sure - I already have a PCI SCSI card for PPC Mac, actually, I just haven't put it to use for lack of peripherals. I suppose I could probably just put my MDD G4 into service as a scanning/touchup machine, now that I think of it...
I think you can buy much better scanner today than MicroTek for its old price.
Yeah, but I certainly can't buy a better scanner today for recycle-center prices!
Most of the image issues sound like a combination of the image getting automatically jpeg compressed, and then color corrected and sharpened. It wouldn't surprise me if the scan software was bad enough to jpeg an image internally before exporting as a TIFF. :P
Oh God, that's so perverse that I bet that's what they're actually doing :cry:
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Yeah, to be sure - I already have a PCI SCSI card for PPC Mac, actually, I just haven't put it to use for lack of peripherals.
I would pull this PCI card out and have a look at it (for manufacturer numbers). I suspect it is just an Adaptec SCSI card that would work in a Windows PC as well, but sold as an OEM part through Apple. I think that's what my 2093B card was and it works fine with Windows XP built-in drivers.
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I believe it is Adaptec, but what I'm not sure about is that there's a socketed EPROM on the board labeled "Apple" which I expect is some kind of BIOS ROM; if that's necessary, I kind of doubt it'll work on an x86 machine without replacing that.
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Those *ARE* awesome scanners. I had one, for years, before a power surge killed it. =C
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I believe it is Adaptec, but what I'm not sure about is that there's a socketed EPROM on the board labeled "Apple" which I expect is some kind of BIOS ROM; if that's necessary, I kind of doubt it'll work on an x86 machine without replacing that.
I used an Adaptec "Apple" PCI SCSI card card in a Windows 2000 Pro work PC for a number of years without problems the only issues was that the Apple EPROM from a PPC mac meant that my x86 PC could not boot off it, but as I was using it to connect a SCSI backup drive and a CD-Writer this was not a problem. It may even have been possible to reflash the card to allow a PC to boot off it but I had no need to so I never tried.
So the odds are reasonable that it will work if you load the correct driver under Windows :-)
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Okay, s'pose I'll give it a shot then. Don't think not being able to boot from a scanner should be an issue ;)
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Okay I did some scan comparisons. The difference is not earthshattering - it's very subtle, but I think the E3 handles colour gradients (especially subtle ones) a little better.
First of all I scanned some black writing on a yellow background. You can see that on the HP 3-in-on it creates a white line around the black writing that isn't there on the original. I even turned off all software sharpening in the scanner software. The image here is a zoomed in detail of the 300 dpi original scan (make sure your browser insn't scaling it down):
http://s11.postimage.org/u36ar96tf/scantest01.png
Next was a colour test. This is a zoomed in section of a watercolour painting. Again the difference isn't huge, but the E3 captures the colours the way they really look on the painting (it can even pick up the VERY faint light blue of the sky). Whereas the HP 3-in-one from 2008 skews the red colours toward purple and cannot pick up the blue sky (it just makes it white).
http://s17.postimage.org/ccw5vclkf/scantest02.png
There was one thing the HP was better at. Black text on a white background was sharper while on the E3 it was more antialiased. But for colour scans with subtle shades the 11 year old E3 has better fidelity.
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I even turned off all software sharpening in the scanner software.
That HP driver is obviously not honoring your request to not adulterate those images. Don't believe me? Just take the e3s image one and apply a 2px sharpen. (And a harsh one at that. Maybe 75%.) Take image 2 and apply a standard color correction.
The hardware isn't the problem, per se. Its those terrible drivers and software. Unless the multi function device is automatically applying these filters before it hands the scan to the os. This may be the case for devices that can scan directly to email or smb share.
I've never been fond of software that thinks it knows better than me what I want. And in that respect the old ways were better... But I really don't think you can blame the optics or hardware in this case.
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That HP driver is obviously not honoring your request to not adulterate those images. Don't believe me? Just take the e3s image one and apply a 2px sharpen. (And a harsh one at that. Maybe 75%.) Take image 2 and apply a standard color correction.
Yeah, I tend to agree with you after staring at the images. The white outline looks like the effects of oversharpening (unsharp mask) and increased contrast.
Interesting that the HP 3-in-one couldn't pick up the subtle blue shades (it does the same with light pink or beige) but this might be a result of a contrast boost filter being applied automatically.
Not sure how I'd fix any of this other than to buy something like VueScan, which is commercial software. Not really interesting in paying more money to fix something in the HP 3-in-1 that shouldn't have been broken in the first place, when the ScanMaker E3 works fine.
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Yeah, I tend to agree with you after staring at the images. The white outline looks like the effects of oversharpening (unsharp mask) and increased contrast.
Indeed. Exactly like it.
Interesting that the HP 3-in-one couldn't pick up the subtle blue shades (it does the same with light pink or beige) but this might be a result of a contrast boost filter being applied automatically.
No, it's the auto-color correction. It picked up the blue tint just fine. Then it incorrectly auto-corrected it to white. That's why your greens look brighter, and your red path went wacky. The image got corrected against a "blue light" condition, which messed with the color balancing of the entire image.
Not sure how I'd fix any of this other than to buy something like VueScan, which is commercial software. Not really interesting in paying more money to fix something in the HP 3-in-1 that shouldn't have been broken in the first place, when the ScanMaker E3 works fine.
Very true, there. If there's no free alternative that supports that scanner, you're screwed. But, of course, you could still pick up a $30 scanner that is supported under free alternatives. The lesson isn't necessarily that older is better, but open, free software is often better. Especially when on a budget. :D
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Problem with old hardware is that most times it's impossible to find working drivers for more recent OSes.
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I still use an older HP all in one (3150) that works better than I would have believed. I noticed a problem about a year ago with it, when it started behaving Like ral-clan's when printing graphics images - specially full page images. It never acted like that when I first bought the thing, so I tried asking HP if they had any feedback on this problem. Before they repsponded, I remembered that they (HP) had updated the software since I bought it. I rolled back to the original drivers, and the problem vanished - And this scanner has worked fine ever since. It is NOT professional quality reproduction, but it isn't bad.
When HP finally responded, they said to make sure I always had the newest software updates installed. I would say always be ready to roll the software back. Thee days I just do not accept the updates for this machine.
Having said all that, I still have my eye out for an older SCSI scanner....
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Having said all that, I still have my eye out for an older SCSI scanner....
Interesting. Thanks for your experience with the HP scanner. I think I'm just using the original driver from the installation disc.
As for looking for a SCSI scanner - that's not a bad idea. It's not a hard and fast rule, but usually scanners with a SCSI interface made in the late 1990s and early 2000s were the "higher end" models in a manufacturer's line. They were the more expensive models meant for business use and use by graphic shops, photographers, etc. The parallel port models were the cheaper, crappier home user models. So if you see a used SCSI scanner it could mean it's a good performer.
The side benefit, as I already mentioned, is that if you find a SCSI scanner there's a fair chance that there's also Amiga scanning software that will work with it.
SCSI scanners used to be the fastest scanners, but I don't think that's the case anymore with USB2.0 and 3.0.
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Well, as I expected, it had no scrap value, so I got it for free :) It's an E3 Plus, but it does seem to be SCSI - it's got one male and one female DB25, which I presume is for pass-through purposes. Haven't gotten a chance to test it, as I need an adapter cable for the SCSI card's newer port, but the glass is clean and intact, it powers on, the stepper motor works, and the light appears properly bright, so I'm betting it's going to work just fine :D
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Well, as I expected, it had no scrap value, so I got it for free :) It's an E3 Plus, but it does seem to be SCSI - it's got one male and one female DB25, which I presume is for pass-through purposes. Haven't gotten a chance to test it, as I need an adapter cable for the SCSI card's newer port, but the glass is clean and intact, it powers on, the stepper motor works, and the light appears properly bright, so I'm betting it's going to work just fine :D
My Scanmaker E3 (non PLUS version) has the standard 50 pin (big) port that looks similar to a Centronics port (but larger) and a DB25 passthrough.
The Windows XP TWAIN drivers I downloaded from MicroTek's site worked fine (they were part of the ScanWizard software). There's a manual here on SCSI installation that seems to show your your model with two 25DB SCSI connectors (second of the pictures showing connection method):
http://support.microtek.com/product_dtl_2.phtml?prod_id=97
But wait! There was also an Enhanced Parallel Port version of the same scanner that ALSO had two connectors on the back:
http://support.microtek.com/ts_doc_SME3+EPPInstlPC.phtml
On the back of the Scanner does it say anything like "EPP" beside the model name?
http://www.dealextreme.com has very cheap SCSI adapters.
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But wait! There was also an Enhanced Parallel Port version of the same scanner that ALSO had two connectors on the back:
Hah, go figure - and no markings on the case or information in the manual to distinguish the two... :/ Still, one of the two main ICs on the board is a 90C26 EPP-to-SCSI adapter, (http://www.evillabs.net/wiki/index.php/OnSpec_90c26) so...I guess it's SCSI? Then again, the pass-through port is labeled "PRINTER," so maybe not. Guess I'll find out...
Edit: Okay, turns out to have been an EPP scanner after all, apparently that chip is serving as a SCSI-to-EPP adapter rather than the other way around (the scanner software even recognizes it as a SCSI host adapter :rolleyes:) But she works, and while I haven't gotten a chance to run a real test, the image quality seems quite nice :)