DPL users/owners of Howtek/Aztek scanners

[sanking]

Finished testing some tapes for drum mounting in terms of adhesion and residue. Tessa and Kami are nothing special. The OEM tape from Aztek is really good. So far I found one match for a decent price ($8 for 1" wide) in tapejungle.com. Search for 70924.

Also the Sunnyside Odorless Paint Thinner works great as mounting fluid. Many hardware stores carry it. Here are the part numbers:
70532 for a quart (<$10)
705G1 for a gallon (<$20)

Armando,

Just wanted to let you know that the 70924 tape from tapejungle.com is a great substitute for the OEM tape from Aztek. I bought a 20-pack of the 1" wide tape and I am very impressed with its holding power and lack of residue on the film.

When one scans 12X20" negatives on a drum scanner there is a premium placed on the holding ability of the tape, otherwise the negative itself is a great risk. Just image a negative that size flapping around at the high RPM of a drum scanner!! Not a pretty result when one lets go.

Sandy

[onnect17]

Glad to know Sandy. They also offer other sizes, in case you need them.

[fishbulb]

Here's a tip for you guys. I started getting pretty frequent banding in my Howtek 4500 scans, and couldn't figure out why. The banding lines were running in the direction of drum rotation. I replaced the belt, checked the lamps. Then I realized that I had recently got rid of my old Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) after it had failed. Something wrong with the battery, it was an ancient APC unit. I had removed it and just plugged the scanner into a normal surge protector.

So, I got a Tripp-Lite Line Conditioner (LC), just a consumer-level one - https://www.amazon.com/Tripp-Lite-LC...dp/B0000512LA/

Did a bunch of scans last night, and no more banding. I could hear the transformers in the LC working every now and then, catching low/over voltage and regulating it. In the 4500 owners manual, it says:

Electrical Specifications

The specified operating range for the Scanmaster 4500 is as follows:

110 Volt Systems (North America) l Low operating range: 90–132 VAC (47–63 Hz).
At a minimum, use a 10 amp circuit (the scanner draws up to 6 amps peak).

220 Volt Systems
High operating range: 180–264 VAC (47–63 Hz).
At a minimum, use a 5 amp circuit (the scanner draws up to 3 amps peak).

The Scanmaster 4500 is equipped with an autoranging power supply and requires a 3-prong grounded receptacle and common ground potential.

Note: It is recommended that your entire system be connected to an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) or, at a minimum, plugged directly into surge-protected power strips.

Given those specs, 6 amps at 110v = 660 watts. So a 1200w LC is more than enough. I still need to get a new UPS, and then I can run the LC -> UPS -> Scanner. Presumably, my old UPS had some type of LC built into it, although probably not transformer based, probably just using battery backup to top-up undervolting.

[Christopher Barrett]

I've been having issues with DPL and scanning 4x5 at full resolution on my 4500. I'm using DPL 8.0 on Windows 10 via a Ratoc SCSI USB converter. Dave was able to point me in the direction that solved his issue and Evan was kind enough to suggest some registry edits, but still no luck. I can scan full res into my old Mac all day long with Silverfast up to a 2GB Tiff limit, but can't do bigger than 645 at 4k dpi on the DPL side without buffer errors.

Are you guys having success scanning big files on the 4500 via DPL 8? I'm getting ready to send my scanner in to Aztek but if it comes back and I still have software issues, I'll be banging my head on the walls.

[fishbulb]

My first suspicion would be that it's the SCSI/USB converter, if everything still works via SCSI on your old Mac. (unless you're using the usb converter on the mac too)

If your Windows 10 PC has a PCI slot, I would try getting an Adaptec ASC-29160N (Dell 073VEX) off of eBay, installing it in your PC, installing drivers for it, and plugging the scanner into that card, with no USB converter.

If your PC doesn't have a PCI slot, well... maybe contact the company that makes the SCSI/USB converter and see what they say?

[mmmily]

Hi,

I am getting an error message "CALIBRATING... ERROR 702" on our Howtek Scanmaster 4500. I spoke to Evan at Aztek about this and he told me it's likely either the motor is not functioning properly or the encoder or encoder flex cable is bad and that I will need to send it in to be serviced. Has anyone else had this issue? How did you resolve it?

Thank you!

[Tyler Boley]

I went through a period of 702 and 719 errors some months back, the thread is here if interested-
http://www.largeformatphotography.in...ities-question

bottom line, contact cleanings, changing belts, lamps, lube, the usual stuff, seems to be working again. Problem is, of course, never sure exactly what was causing the errors, or if they will return.

[Klyment Tan]

Hi,

I am getting an error message "CALIBRATING... ERROR 702" on our Howtek Scanmaster 4500. I spoke to Evan at Aztek about this and he told me it's likely either the motor is not functioning properly or the encoder or encoder flex cable is bad and that I will need to send it in to be serviced. Has anyone else had this issue? How did you resolve it?

Thank you!

If you haven't already solved this issue, as Tyler Boley pointed out in his other thread a few months ago, checking the drive belt is probably the first thing to try. I have received F702 errors on a number of different Howtek Scanmaster 4500's and absolutely every time replacing the drive belt solved the issue as the drive belt eventually cracks or otherwise loosens. As much respect as I have for Aztek continuing to "support" Howtek drum scanners I feel that Evan often speculates at what the most drastic "solutions" may be to the problems that you describe and the solutions are are extremely drastic or are completely nonsensical.

[Klyment Tan]

I've been having issues with DPL and scanning 4x5 at full resolution on my 4500. I'm using DPL 8.0 on Windows 10 via a Ratoc SCSI USB converter. Dave was able to point me in the direction that solved his issue and Evan was kind enough to suggest some registry edits, but still no luck. I can scan full res into my old Mac all day long with Silverfast up to a 2GB Tiff limit, but can't do bigger than 645 at 4k dpi on the DPL side without buffer errors.

Are you guys having success scanning big files on the 4500 via DPL 8? I'm getting ready to send my scanner in to Aztek but if it comes back and I still have software issues, I'll be banging my head on the walls.

Chris,

I'm assuming that you're using a 64bit installation of Windows 10. Are you getting an error like "Buffer transfer length too big = 90528" where the random number I put in could be all kinds of numbers? I am using DPL 8.1 and after months of not getting a solution from Evan/Aztek for buffer overrun issues with various 64bit installations of Windows and with a few different computer hardware configurations including two very different Adaptec SCSI controllers (29320LPE PCI-E native SCSI-5 and 19160 regular PCI SCSI-3 I think) on a number of different Intel-based computer configurations and Evan suggested that my scanner was likely broken and that I should have him fix it. However, I managed to recreate the problem with another SM4500 that I sold to someone a few years ago with Aztek DPL 7.x and DPL 8.x had the same buffer issues. I also tried the other machine on which I had installed DPL 7.x with 32bit operating system and sold with the other SM4500 and with my current SM4500 I was unable to reproduce the problem. It wasn't until I installed Windows 7 Pro 32bit onto another hard drive that the buffer problem completely went away. So yes, DPL 8.x can be installed and works for a lot of situations on a 64bit operating system. But scanning a longer piece of film latitudinally (longer film direction following direction of drum rotation) I would get a buffer overrun error on any 64bit operating system installation that I have tried. For example, scanning a 6x17 frame loaded latitudinally I would encounter the buffer overrun issue. Scanning the film with it loaded longitudinally I was able to scan even at 4000PPI without error but the scanner has to cover a much larger area of the drum and therefore take much longer since it's covering the same surface area of around four 6x17's.

Anyhow, let me know if the error you are having is resembles what I noted above. Thanks. =)

[Christopher Barrett]

Ooh, thanks! I'll give that a go. Though, I recently got a DPL update notice, so I'll try the new version first.

Cheers from Casablanca,
Chris