Scanner Testing

Scanner testing is done at the scanner testing station in printerland. This is the desk at the extreme NE corner of the warehouse (next to the windows)

The test computer set up there has both standard and development scanner backends.

Most of the scanners we keep are USB, but a few are SCSI.

USB

1. Select a scanner
2. Locate a suitable power supply
   • • Most scanners use a 12V 1.25A positive center power supply, but there are many exceptions.
3. make sure the scanner is unlocked (not all scanner have locks)
4. Plug into the USB port of the computer and power up the scanner
5. Start xsane
6. If xsane does not find any devices, wait a minute and try again (sometimes the scanner needs to warm up first).
7. If xsane does find a device, it will open a preview pane. Put in an image to scan. (a magazine cover with both text and pictures is good.)
8. Preview and then scan the image.
9. Look for color variations, wavy lines, empty scan lines. The most frequent problem is blotchy weird color. Some scanners miss lines, which will show up as black streaks on the resulting image (best seen at high resolution).

If the scanner fails at any point, record the number and put the scanner in the CBM bin.

If the scanner passes the tests, then write "OK" and the highest dpi tested on the label.

Tested OK scanners can be sent to the Thrift Store or used for Hardware Grants.

SCSI

The following are preliminary notes

• a scsi card is now installed which will work with scanners
• use "scsiadd -s" to look for the scanner
• use "scsiadd -a <id>" to add the device
• there is probably a way of deleting devices no longer being used
• check for the device being used (e.g. /dev/sg0)
• make sure the device is usable by members of the scsi group
  • "chgrp scanner <device>"
  • "chmod 660 <device>"
  • this has already been done for /dev/sg0
• run xsane and follow similar criteria to USB

Parallel

These are not being tested at the moment