It Lives! Old HP SCSI Scanner on Vista x64

Hi

Just thought I'd post my story, should work for any SCSI based HP Scanjet Scanner NOT supported in Vista (i.e. all the "Ancient" ones 3, 5 series 6XXX etc) although I am basing this on what I have - 6100C.

I originally had this old warhorse way back in the days of 95/NT4 on an ISA SCSI card. Up until I installed Vista x64 last week, it had quite happily run under XP on an Adaptec 2904 Scsi Card, which happens to have no Vista driver support (I'm told there is a way round this but I replaced the card with a cheap Adaptec 19160 from ebay which IS supported natively). Plugged in scanner, said lots of prayers and booted up. Card detected in Vista x64 no probs. Looked for the scanner, showed up as a C2520A SCSI device.

Tried installing the old version of Precisionscan Pro I had working under XP, it installed fine and the software would run but alas the dreaded "No Scanner detected"

Just as I was about to scream/cry/start looking for another scanner, the thought occured to me to go download the latest VueScan trial... sure enough installed and was promted to "install a driver that supports most scanners" (nothing like being specific eh?!) did so and waited for the routine to finish.

Ran VueScan, and was gutted to see a "scanner not found message" Looked sadly down at my faithful 6100c thinking "thats it... the end". Then it occured to me that I hadn't rebooted in any of this, this is SCSI after all not USB. Soo I shutdown Vista x64 and waited for the reboot......

Loaded up Vuescan and in the "source" tab...

Scanjet 6100

Have done a test scan and all would appear to work!1one1. Obviously Vuescan is only a trial and as such all scans are watermarked but I will remedy that in due course.

I even have an HP Scanjet 6100 showing up under Scanners and Cameras in control panel! Although this is just "for show" since there is still no Windows support - you lose the nifty features like being able to import directly into MSWord/Photoshop etc, but I never really used these much anyways so won't miss them.

To sum up

1) Check that Vuescan Supports your scanner
2) Check that Vista x64 supports your SCSI Card
3) Forget about installing your old software - if Vuescan supports your scanner than you don't need the old driver - I installed it but it did nothing save leave Precisionscan Pro in an undeletable folder with an uninstaller that would not work (in the VueScan instructions it says put your software on first) so I ended up doing a system restore.
4) Reboot after install and the "found new hardware" wizard should scan and (eventually) find the Vuescan installed driver.

I don't work for Hamrick software (Vuescan publisher) and I'm sorry if I have rambled a bit, I'm just pleased I can use my Scanner

Hope this Helps

cheers

Andrew

Now the workaround for 2904 and similar chipset based cards, you need:

"Adaptec AIC-7870 PCI SCSI Controller (Emulated)"

In device manager, select the icon of the scsi adapter ----> properties----> in the driver tab, click on "update driver"

Select "Browse my computer for driver software"
Click "Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer"

At "Select your device type from the list", select "Storage
controllers"

"Show compatible hardware" checkbox ---> unchecked
Then select "Adaptec" as manufacturer, and "Adaptec AIC-7870 PCI SCSI
Controller (Emulated)" as model.

This is "at you own risk", and I haven't tried it but it was suggested to me as a possible workaround to get the 2904 (and similar chipset) going. Personally, I had replaced the card and had things working before I got this advice, but for completeness I thought I would post as well.

Andrew

That's great that you got it to work. Cool news.