Manpages - sane-artec.5

sane-artec - SANE backend for Artec flatbed scanners

The sane-artec library implements a SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy) backend that provides access to Artec/Ultima SCSI flatbed scanners. At present, the following scanners are known to work at least partially with this backend:

• Artec A6000C
  
• Artec A6000C PLUS
  
• Artec ViewStation AT3
  
• BlackWidow BW4800SP (rebadged Artec AT3)
  
• Artec ViewStation AT6
  
• Artec ViewStation AT12
  
• Artec AM12S
  
• Plustek 19200S (rebadged Artec AM12S)

Although this manual page is generally updated with each release, up-to-date information on new releases and extraneous helpful hints are available from the backend homepage: http://www4.infi.net/~cpinkham/sane.

The contents of the artec.conf file are a list of device names that correspond to Artec scanners. Empty lines and lines starting with a hash mark (#) are ignored. See *sane-scsi*(5) on details of what constitutes a valid device name.

Sample file:

  # artec.conf
  #
  # this is a comment.
  #
  # this line says search for any SCSI devices which are scanners and have
  #     a vendor string of 'ULTIMA'
  scsi ULTIMA
  #
  # the next line forces the backend to assume the next scanner found has
  #     the specified vendor string (useful for testing rebadged models).
  vendor ULTIMA
  #
  # the next line forces the backend to assume the next scanner found has
  #     the specified model string (useful for testing rebadged models).
  model AT3
  #
  # now a line that actually specifies a device.  The backend is going to
  #     assume this is an Artec/Ultima AT3 because we forced the vendor and
  #     model above.
  /dev/scanner
  #
  # once we hit a scanner device line, the forced vendor and model
  # string are
  #     'forgotten', so the vendor and model for this next device will be
  #     determined from the result of a SCSI inquiry.
  /dev/sge
  #

Some Artec scanners come with an included SCSI adapter. If your scanner came with a DTC ISA scsi cards, you can probably use it with recent (>= 2.2.0) kernels using the generic NCR5380 support. You must pass the following boot argument to the kernel: “dtc3181e=0x2c0,0”
I do not have any information on the PCI SCSI adapter included with some newer Artec scanners.

/etc/sane.d/artec.conf

The backend configuration file (see also description of SANE_CONFIG_DIR below).

/usr/lib/sane/libsane-artec.a

The static library implementing this backend.

/usr/lib/sane/libsane-artec.so

The shared library implementing this backend (present on systems that support dynamic loading).

SANE_CONFIG_DIR

This environment variable specifies the list of directories that may contain the configuration file. Under UNIX, the directories are separated by a colon (`:’), under OS/2, they are separated by a semi- colon (`;’). If this variable is not set, the configuration file is searched in two default directories: first, the current working direc- tory (“.”) and then in /etc/sane.d. If the value of the environment variable ends with the directory separator character, then the default directories are searched after the explicitly specified directories. For example, setting SANE_CONFIG_DIR to “tmp/config:“ would result in directories /tmp/config, ., and /etc/sane.d being searched (in this order).

SANE_DEBUG_ARTEC

If the library was compiled with debug support enabled, this environment variable controls the debug level for this backend. E.g., a value of 128 requests all debug output to be printed. Smaller levels reduce verbosity: SANE_DEBUG_ARTEC values:

  Number  Remark
   0       print important errors
   1       print errors
   2       print sense
   3       print warnings
   4       print scanner-inquiry
   5       print information
   6       print less important information
   7       print major called procedures
   8       print all called procedures
   9       print procedure info/data messages
   10      print called sane-init-routines
   11      print called sane-procedures
   12      print sane infos
   13      print sane option-control messages
   50      print verbose data/debug messages
   == 100  print software RGB calibration data
   == 101  print raw data from scanner to artec.data.raw file
   == 128  print out all messages

Example: export SANE_DEBUG_ARTEC=13

Known bugs in this release: A6000C+ users with firmware v1.92 or earlier have problems with the backend, the cause has not been determined. Sometimes the backend is not particularly robust, you can possibly lock up the SCSI bus (and/or machine) by not having patience enough when scanning. 3-channel gamma correction is not implemented and single-channel gamma correction is not totally working on models other than the AT3.

sane*(7),* *sane-scsi*(5)

Chris Pinkham <cpinkham@corp.infi.net>