sane-microtek(5)

📦
version 1.4.0 · 8 versions
, in fedora 43, fedora 44, opensuse-leap 16.0

💅 sane-microtek(5) — the group chat recap

okay bestie, so this is a SANE page (that's Scanner Access Now Easy, iconic name, no notes) and it's all about the sane-microtek backend for Microtek scanners. Specifically the "second generation" girlies 💖.

✨ NAME ✨

sane-microtek — the SANE backend for Microtek scanners, that's her 🎀

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

The sane-microtek library implements a SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy) backend that gives you access to the "second generation" Microtek scanners. And right now, the following hardware is known to work with this backend 👑

  • Microtek ScanMaker E2, E3, E6
  • Microtek ScanMaker II, IIG, IIHR, IISP, III
  • Microtek ScanMaker 35t, 35t+, 45t
  • Microtek ScanMaker 600GS, 600ZS (see bug notes 👀)
  • Agfa StudioScan
  • Agfa StudioScan II, StudioScan IIsi
  • Agfa Arcus II (but not the "Arcus", truly not the same girl)
  • Agfa DuoScan (preliminary)
  • Vobis "Highscreen Realscan"
  • Microtek Color PageWiz (preliminary)
  • Transparent Media Adapter
  • Document AutoFeeder

The driver supports line art, halftone, 8bpp gray, and 24bpp color scans at normal and "expanded" resolutions (like, 1200x1200 on an E6, she's flexible 💅), plus fast scans for color previews and downloadable gamma tables. We love a versatile icon ✨

The supported scanners are all SCSI scanners. That said, some parallel port models may work (under Linux), if they use a parport->scsi chip, and if you can find a scsi->parport driver. This is known to be the case for the Color PageWiz 🦋

The driver does not support the newest Microtek scanners, such as the V330 and V660, because they use a new and very different SCSI-II command set. For those, try the alternate microtek2(5) backend instead. Most non-SCSI scanners would use the new command set. Most scanners newer than the Scanmaker E6 would use the new command set. so basically if yours is newer, different era, different rules, respect it 🙈

If you own a Microtek scanner other than the ones listed above, tell us what happens — go look at the BUGS section at the end of this document, fr fr 🫶

And ngl, even though this manual page is generally updated with each release, up-to-date info on new releases and extraneous helpful hints are available from the backend homepage:

http://www.mir.com/mtek/

the link is giving vintage but she's serving 🎀

🦋 DEVICE NAMES 🦋

This backend expects device names of the form:

special

Where special is the UNIX path-name for the special device that corresponds to the scanner. And the special device name must be a generic SCSI device or a symlink to such a device. Under Linux, such a device name could be /dev/sga or /dev/sge, for example 💖

⭐ CONFIGURATION ⭐

The contents of the microtek.conf file is a list of device names that correspond to Microtek scanners. Empty lines and lines starting with a hash mark (#) are ignored. A sample configuration file is shown below:

/dev/scanner
# this is a comment
/dev/sge

The configuration file may also contain the special tokens norealcal or noprecal:

  • norealcal will disable the use of magic, undocumented scanner calibration commands which are known to work on the E6, but may not work with other models 🔮
  • noprecal will disable logic which tries to avoid scanner precalibration. This logic would only have been activated if the magic calibration code was turned off.

🎀 FILES 🎀

  • /etc/sane.d/microtek.conf — the backend configuration file (see also description of SANE_CONFIG_DIR below)
  • /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-microtek.a — the static library implementing this backend
  • /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-microtek.so — the shared library implementing this backend (present on systems that support dynamic loading)

💜 ENVIRONMENT 💜

  • SANE_CONFIG_DIR — this environment variable specifies the list of directories that may contain the configuration file. On *NIX systems, 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 directory (".") 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_MICROTEK — if the library was compiled with debugging support enabled, this environment variable controls the debug level for this backend. A value of 128 requests maximally copious debug output ✨; smaller levels reduce verbosity.

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

sane(7), sane-scsi(5), sane-microtek2(5)

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Matt Marjanovic — the main character who made this happen 💅

💀 BUGS 💀

Known bugs/limitations are:

  • Brightness and contrast broken 😭
  • The 600GS is grayscale only, and will lock up if you select color. (Unfortunately, the 600GS and 600ZS are indistinguishable by software.) 🙈

i.e. don't complain about these — but if brightness and/or contrast do work for you, please tell me. genuinely, i need to know 🫶

If your scanner locks up, try setting the norealcal or noprecal option in the configuration file (first one, then both), and see if it helps. (If it does, report it.) lowkey a diagnostic slay 🔥

Send lengthy bug reports and new scanner information to mtek-bugs@mir.com. All bug reports and new scanner inquiries should include an error log file 📄. You can generate copious stderr output by setting the SANE_DEBUG_MICROTEK environment variable described above. For example:

setenv SANE_DEBUG_MICROTEK 128
ok and this part is important bestie — more general comments, suggestions, and inquiries about frontends or SANE should go to sane-devel@alioth-lists.debian.net, the SANE Developers mailing list. Have a look at http://www.sane-project.org/mailing-lists.html concerning subscription to sane-devel. don't send your vibe questions to the bug address, i'm begging 🙏

and that's the whole page, written by the SANE crew, dated 13 Jul 2008 — yeah she's an older icon but she still ate 💅✨

📦 where this page comes from