[ale] Canoscan 4400f driver

Michael Trausch mike at trausch.us
Mon Jan 4 10:45:03 EST 2010


On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 8:59 AM, Asher Vilensky <ashervilensky at gmail.com> wrote:
> A note from a Windows guy (maybe, maybe in the process of conversion):
>
> I tried to reinstall XP...EPIC FAILURE...dunno why, but nothing but
> trouble...Sooo, I took Asher's way out and installed Mint...Works like a
> charm, even wireless ! but, can't find a driver for the scanner, a Canoscan
> 4400f...Found a blog where 2 geeks were talking about working on a driver
> last July, but no further mention
>
> Anybody knows anything about this specific scanner on Linux?

I am trying to find a solution for a CanoScan LiDE 70.  In the
meantime, however, what is being used is Windows XP installed inside
of VirtualBox, and the scanner is being passed-through to the Windows
guest system.  In this way, what they have is something that works
until SANE gains support.

I wrote to Canon asking about specifications, and what they told me
was that while they are not going to produce specs for the hardware,
they would forward the request up to management so that they knew that
there were people using systems running SANE that wanted to be able to
use their scanners.  I do not expect that this will yield anything,
but who knows---maybe you could write in, too.  And if you know anyone
else who wants to use Canon hardware with free software, they should
also write as well.  Of course, the goal is that we should get
specifications for the hardware.

Someone is working on reverse engineering the LiDE 70, but I don't
(yet) understand their specs because they depend on a pretty low-level
knowledge of USB it seems.  That said, I suspect that at some point,
this person might wind up writing code that functions as a driver
under SANE.

   --- Mike


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