Howtek 4500 Questions?

[apache]

Hello Everybody,

I am going through the pro's and con's of possibly picking up a used Howtek 4500 scanner.

My principle concern is running the hardware from my Mac. I am running OSX ver. 10.5.6. via a unibody MacBook Pro.

One obstacle that I'm trying to tackle is the SCSI connection. What style of SCSI connector runs from the Howtek (male or female connector, Ultra SCSI, pin count, etc.)? It's funny, I have never heard the term "dongle" until I started to research drum scanners. Are there any considerations with a SCSI adaptor as it relates to this dongle piece of hardware? Is anybody using or can they recommend an adaptor and driver that will work with Leopard?

Lastly, if this hardware/connection issue can be tackled has anybody used the Aztek standard DPL software succesfully through Fusion ran from a BootCamp partition?

Thanks in Advance for any and all advice/suggestions.

Cheers,
Greg

[domaz]

You are probably going to have problems connecting SCSI to a newer Mac unless you can physically put a PCI SCSI card in there. They have firewire to SCSI adapters I suppose but the likely hood of one of those actually working without glitches seems small. As far as SCSI connectors go remember that you can get adapters to basically go from any one SCSI connector to another without a problem. It's just a matter of figuring out what you need and finding the adapter.

[Don Hutton]

I actually used a SCSI firewire adapter just fine running Silverfast on a Mac with a 4500. When I bought DPL, I dedicated a PC to the scanner.

[Bruce Watson]

You might want to join the yahoo group ScanHi-End and search the archives. The Howtek SCSI issues have been discussed over and over. There's some good information there. You'll have to dig for it though.

[apache]

You are probably going to have problems connecting SCSI to a newer Mac unless you can physically put a PCI SCSI card in there. They have firewire to SCSI adapters I suppose but the likely hood of one of those actually working without glitches seems small. As far as SCSI connectors go remember that you can get adapters to basically go from any one SCSI connector to another without a problem. It's just a matter of figuring out what you need and finding the adapter.

There are PCMIA SCSI cards out there. Do you think that would suffice?

There's no possibility for sliding in any PCI card into the MoBo.

[IanMazursky]

Apache,
Your best bet is to get a low cost pc and run DPL on it. I doubt the MBP would be easy to setup if at all possible.
But it might be possible. The issue would not only be the scsi connection but the finicky way that dongles behave.
I think the only way to get a scsi connection without a pci card is the old firewire to scsi adapters.
The MBP uses the Express Card slot and not PCMCIA so those are out.

I highly recommend DPL for the 4500. I have the Pro version for my Howtek 7500 and Aztek Premier and its fantastic.
I came from Trident and it does have a learning curve but once you get the hang of it, you wont be disappointed.
If you do want to go the mac route, Trident will only run on OS9 and silverfast works on OSX but i could never get it working.

[domaz]

PCMCIA could be a possibility, but finding drivers for an old card on a newer Mac sounds like it could be difficult. If you go that route make sure you get an Adaptec or other major brand card.

[apache]

Yep, I do have a PC desktop that I could run the scanner on. Any suggestions on hardware for this route?

I was hoping to be able to do things on a single platform and OS. Oh well, maybe it would be a good to thing to avoid the stress and frustrations by trying to pound a square peg into a round hole ;-)

Next question: Is the durability of the Howtek 4500 decent? I'm not a professional, but rather a hobbyist. What are the likely perishables as far as maintenance and upkeep goes?

Thanks Ian et. al., for the help so far.

G

[Don Hutton]

They seem OK. The only issue I've had was with some sudden unexplained banding which went away after I removed and cleaned the connectors on most of the boards. You really need to be asking these sorts of questions on the Scan Hi-End board - there are a bunch of 4500 users there. I'd keep a bunch of spare lamps and a couple of drive belts on hand. I get my lamps from http://www.atlantalightbulbs.com/ and belts from Aztek (who keep a pretty good stash of parts). If the machine is going to be an integral part of your imaging chain going forward, it may be a good idea to keep an eye open for a parts machine...

[apache]

I have looked over the hi-end scan group at yahoo. It's painful... Reminds me of the ancient bulletin boards accessed by old 2400 baud rate modems before the www.internet came into being.

[Don Hutton]

Well, if you hit a problem, you'll learn to deal with the pain - there're a lot of very helpful people there.

[apache]

I'm certain that there is.

Thanks for everyone's help here!

G