Photo Smart Scanner
December 30, 2004 9:30 AM   Subscribe

I have an old first generation HP Photo Smart scanner that has a SCSI interface. It came with a proprietary HP SCSI / ISA card that won't work in my newish Dell since the motherboard has only PCI slots. Third party dealers want $175 for the old, refurbished SCSI / PCI cards that I need. HP sells them directly for $92. Do I need to stick with the proprietary PCI card, or would a generic SCSI / PCI card that I can pick up for $15 work just as well?
posted by crank to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)
 
Perhaps a silly question, but have you done research on how much a new (USB-connected) scanner would cost? Certainly it would boast more features (and probably better scan quality) than a years-old scanner, though HP did make good ones back in the day.

I seem to recall good scanners being in the neighborhood of $100 or so.
posted by aberrant at 9:57 AM on December 30, 2004


If the scanner is SCSI, any SCSI card will do, more or less. And cheap SCSI cards will likely have fewer pins and be easier to match to your scanner right off. You might need a couple cables if the pins don't match, but otherwise, things should work.
posted by AlexReynolds at 10:06 AM on December 30, 2004


I have to second aberrant's suggestion of just buying a new USB scanner.

Failing that, any SCSI card should do, so long as it's the right flavour of SCSI and you get the right mix of adapters
posted by mosch at 10:11 AM on December 30, 2004


Response by poster: Thanks for the responses, everybody.

Perhaps a silly question, but have you done research on how much a new (USB-connected) scanner would cost? Certainly it would boast more features (and probably better scan quality) than a years-old scanner, though HP did make good ones back in the day.

A new USB scanner would definitely be the optimal solution, but this old Photo Smart scanner can handle slides and negatives, which is really what I need it for. According to this AskMe thread new negative and slide scanners look pretty expensive, though I assume the quality must be better. Haha, maybe I should shop around after all...
posted by crank at 11:44 AM on December 30, 2004


If you need to scan slides and negatives, don't bother with a flatbed scanner. Look into a Nikon CoolScan or Polaroid slide scanner. You'll get higher resolution scans, less noise and better color.
posted by AlexReynolds at 12:29 PM on December 30, 2004


I think I have some PCI SCSI cards sitting around, actually. E-mail is in profile if you're interested (though I must warn you, it's probably "in a box somewhere"). As long as the card supports your SCSI version and you have the right cable, you're mint. If it has a 50-pin Centronic connector (like a big parallel printer port) it's SCSI-1, which is slow, and won't really be affected by a cheap card.

Here's some information on film scanners, which are both more expensive and better, as usual.
posted by nTeleKy at 1:07 PM on December 30, 2004


I think I used to have one of these scanners. The cards have some proprietary gunk on them that means that the scanner won't work with any other type fo cards. The newspaper I was working for at the time junked ours when PCI became popular and got USB scanners.
posted by SpecialK at 1:09 PM on December 30, 2004


The cards drivers have some proprietary gunk on them...
posted by majick at 2:18 PM on December 30, 2004


I've worked with one of these too. Drivers are the proprietary bit. It was a Scanjet 4, BTW.

Since the scanner is SCSI, that means it will work with any card. The magic occurs in the drivers and the interface controller on the scanner- they convert native tongue to SCSI signals.

I had a client who needed to keep his scanner, but bought a faster hard disk and new PCI SCSI card (upgrade from the ISA that came with the scanner). It worked flawlessly on the new card.
posted by id at 2:43 PM on December 30, 2004


I'm using a 10 year HP flatbed SCSI scanner with a non-HP SCSI card just fine on my windows XP box right now.

HP used a pretty generic SCSI command set at the time across many of their products. If yours was one of them it will work as well as mine does (which is to say, excellently -- I love this "old junk").
posted by shepd at 4:34 PM on December 30, 2004


Response by poster: Thanks everyone.

I bought an Adaptec card on Ebay for $7.45.

This old scanner is pretty interesting, actually. It's not a flatbed. Instead there's a slot that sucks in your photo, scans it, and shoots it back out. Press a button and the slot magically reshapes itself to the width of a slide. Press it again and another, smaller slot appears in order to accommodate negatives. I guess it was a costly mechanism to manufacture because at some point HP turned the PhotoSmart line into small flatbed scanners and I guess you had to put slides and negatives into some kind of carriage for scanning.
posted by crank at 6:32 PM on December 30, 2004


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