Winsor said:
Any scanner still using SCSI exclusively is old technology. Normal USB
is too slow to handle the large files of a film scanner. Based on what
is available now you should be probably looking for a FireWire scanner(
which does not have the little pesky rules that SCSI has). If the
scanner has been improved to handle FireWire you can probably be
confident that improvements have also been made in the imaging portion
of the scanner since the design of the SCSI model. FireWire cards that
move data right along retail for less than a $100 now.
--------------
But we need to consider the "system" and not just the speed of the
transmission channel. I have an Acer Scanwit that uses SCSI II. SCSI
II runs at 10 megabytes/second but the scanner's actual transmission
rate is only 2 megabytes/second... not much faster than USB 1's 1.5
megabytes/second. Blazing speed is not required here since the scan
mechanism itself requires approximately 38 seconds to scan an image at
2700 dpi and full 36 bit color resolution. The 2 megabyte/second
transmission channel is sized to be able to just keep up with the data
coming off the scan head.
The Scanwit design is not old. The reason SCSI II is used is that it's
the cheapest solution that meets the perfomance requirement of the
scanner mechanism. While SCSI can be troublesome if you try mixing and
matching multiple SCSI devices, the SCSI II card and driver that comes
with the Scanwit is matched to the device. If it's the only SCSI device
on your system it should be trouble free.
That said, if I were buying a new scanner that was as inexpensive as the
Scanwit and I had an option of choosing a Firewire or USB 2 interface I
would do it in a heartbeat. But performance would not be a
consideration since even USB 1 is almost fast enough to keep up.
Chuck Norcutt
Woburn, Massachusetts, USA
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