Polaroid Sprintscan 45 Ultra

[Cohen]

Hey group

First time posting. We recently found a Polaroid Sprintscan 45 ultra in the storage at our photolab (the previous owner left a lot of things behind!) The scanner is complete, the only thing missing is the Polacolor insight software cd. I've looked all over the internet & the driver links that I've found are dead. I even contacted Polariod, but due to their company restructuring that took place in 2002 it is difficult to get support on older products.
I was wondering if anybody had a copy of the drivers that they could send me or if they could point me in the right direction? Any & all help on this is appreciated as we are very eager to fire this thing up & check out what this thing is all about.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Cohen
www.richardphotolab.com

[D. Bryant]

Hey group

First time posting. We recently found a Polaroid Sprintscan 45 ultra in the storage at our photolab (the previous owner left a lot of things behind!) The scanner is complete, the only thing missing is the Polacolor insight software cd. I've looked all over the internet & the driver links that I've found are dead. I even contacted Polariod, but due to their company restructuring that took place in 2002 it is difficult to get support on older products.
I was wondering if anybody had a copy of the drivers that they could send me or if they could point me in the right direction? Any & all help on this is appreciated as we are very eager to fire this thing up & check out what this thing is all about.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Cohen
www.richardphotolab.com

If you don't have any luck here post this message on Photo.net. I think there are some Sprintscan 46 Ultra users there.

Don Bryant

[Bob McCarthy]

Scott Rosenberg went through this a few years back. You can contact him through this site. I think he was able to obtain a copy.

bob

[domaz]

It's supported by Vuescan (http://www.hamrick.com/vuescan/vuescan.htm#polaroid)- you don't need the manufacturers drivers. Buy Vuescan and get scanning. If it's a SCSI scanner the cables and adapters are standard and it's not hard to find a cheap Adaptec PCI SCSI card.

[shileshjani]

Try this:

http://www.opendrivers.com/categorycompany/16/1474/scanner-polaroid-free-driver-download.html

Good luck.

Shilesh

[shileshjani]

If that is a dead end, let me know via PM. I have the Polaroid SS 120 MF scanner, and if memory serves me, the software CD includes drivers for all Polaroid scanners, including 45 Ultra. I can send you a copy.

I am not sure if Vuescan will work by itself because it is a scanning interface, and still needs OEM drivers installed in the OS to interact with the hardware. But I may be mistaken about that.

Shilesh


Try this:

http://www.opendrivers.com/categorycompany/16/1474/scanner-polaroid-free-driver-download.html

Good luck.

Shilesh

[Ken Lee]

Didn't Microtek take over that scanner, and rebrand it under their name ?

[domaz]

I am not sure if Vuescan will work by itself because it is a scanning interface, and still needs OEM drivers installed in the OS to interact with the hardware. But I may be mistaken about that.
Shilesh

Vuescan only needs Manufacturers drivers for USB scanners. For SCSI it just takes over the SCSI bus and talks directly to it- at least it does on Windows. On Mac who knows.

[D. Bryant]

Vuescan only needs Manufacturers drivers for USB scanners. For SCSI it just takes over the SCSI bus and talks directly to it- at least it does on Windows. On Mac who knows.

Vuescan won't work without the OEM drivers at least for my Sprintscan 120, however that was using a firewire hookup. You maybe correct about the SCSI port. My Agfa Duoscan didn't need OEM drivers for the SCSI connect. I don't think the drivers for the 45 ultra are on the Sprintscn 120 disk but I'll try looking, just to check.

The Polaroid scanners were made by Microtek just as they did for Agfa, unfortunately the Microtek branded drivers fail to work with Polaroid branded scanners, at least as far as I can confirm from past failed attempts to use them with the Polaroid 120.

Don Bryant

[rdenney]

Vuescan won't work without the OEM drivers at least for my Sprintscan 120, however that was using a firewire hookup. You maybe correct about the SCSI port.

Yes, he is correct. Ed Hamrick started the whole Vuescan program as a generic scanner driver for SCSI-connected devices. All the vintage SCSI-connected scanners that Vuescan supports it does at low level and directly. Later, when his user interface and scanner controls started becoming popular, he started supporting some non-SCSI scanners through the manufacturer drivers. Initially, though, Vuescan only supported SCSI scanners. Before firewire and USB, though, the only two options were SCSI and the parallel port. Vuescan has never support scanners that use the parallel port.

I did not need a Minolta driver for my Multi II with Vuescan. But I also don't need a Nikon driver for my 8000ED, which uses a firewire connection.

What you give up with Vuescan is a twain-compliant driver. This isn't much of a limitation in our world--we usually use dedicated software for scanning rather than acquiring scans from within other software. But that was a more visible limitation 10 years ago.

Rick "a Vuescan user since 1999ish" Denney

[shileshjani]

Thank you everyone for the education about SCSI/Vuescan. I am planning on migrating from my current Win XP Pro 32 bit to a new box with Win 7 64 bit, and I was worried that my SS 120 will not have the requisite driver for the new OS. But seems like I might still be able to use it with Vuescan.

This is an awesome forum for information. Happy Independence Day!

Shilesh

[Willem]

There's a Polaroid Sprintscan 120 for sale in the Netherlands. Bit pricy at €950 Euro, although you can offer less and see whether it will e accepted. Checkout www.marktplaats.nl if interested. (I bought a Screen instead via this website.)

[tbeaman]

Thank you everyone for the education about SCSI/Vuescan. I am planning on migrating from my current Win XP Pro 32 bit to a new box with Win 7 64 bit, and I was worried that my SS 120 will not have the requisite driver for the new OS. But seems like I might still be able to use it with Vuescan.

Your only worry now will be the compatibility of the SCSI card.

This all reminds me that I need to hook up that Sprintscan 35 plus I picked up for nothing recently and see how it compares to the 4990 for miniature format.

[Thilo Schmid]

I'm operating a SprintScan 45 Ultra on current Hardware running Windows 7 x64. VUESCAN handles this without grumble.The original Polacolor Insight Software will not run on anything beyond Windows XP, because the scanner driver architecture has been changed twice since then. The right SCSI-Adapter is your only concern here. You'll have to find one that has a Single Ended Bus (SE), like an Adaptec prior to Ultra 320. Newer versions with a Low Voltage Differential Bus (LVD) will not work.

VUESCAN is even more powerful than the original Insight Software, though I liked their unique dodge and burn feature which VUESCAN does not offer. There is, however, one drawback. VUESCAN does not calibrate the scanner in the same way the Insight Software did. The Scanner has a bult-in white target for calibration (which should be cleaned from time to time) and VUESCAN obviously did not take this into account the same way as the original drivers did. This may result in visible stripes, especially when scanning negatives where a gamma >1 is applied (i.e. contrast is increased and more stripes become visible as the CCDs in the array age differently). If necessary, these stripes can be eliminated with a relative simple Photoshop operation (combine it with a mask scanned from a blank slide). It’s worth the trouble, because it is still a very good scanner, delivering up to 500MB of actually useful data out of a 4x5 color slide. It also performs well on B&W negs, because of it can deliver raw data with 16-bit grey values which allow you to deliver roughly as much grey tones in the lightroom as you could in a darkroom ;-)

[dneilson]

I did a search for Polacolar Insight and came up with several links to download the program. here is one.

http://download.cnet.com/Polaroid-PolaColor-Insight-Pro-for-Windows/3000-2192_4-27475.html

[domaz]

I'm operating a SprintScan 45 Ultra on current Hardware running Windows 7 x64. VUESCAN handles this without grumble.The original Polacolor Insight Software will not run on anything beyond Windows XP, because the scanner driver architecture has been changed twice since then. The right SCSI-Adapter is your only concern here. You'll have to find one that has a Single Ended Bus (SE), like an Adaptec prior to Ultra 320. Newer versions with a Low Voltage Differential Bus (LVD) will not work.

Actually you can get it to work with an LVD bus with the right adapter. Just guessing maybe something like this? (http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=104&cp_id=10402&cs_id=1040213&p_id=787&seq=1&format=2). LVD SCSI has always been compatable with non-LVD.

[Thilo Schmid]

LVD SCSI has always been compatable with non-LVD.Not as far as I know, see e.g. http://www.storagesearch.com/lvdart.html. Only multimode bus systems are able to serve both kinds of signaling. This has nothing to do with the plug or the number of pins on it which could be handled by a corresponding adaptor. However, it will not work with a later generation Adaptec 39320 (Ultra 320) which I have tried.

[domaz]

Not as far as I know, see e.g. http://www.storagesearch.com/lvdart.html. Only multimode bus systems are able to serve both kinds of signaling. This has nothing to do with the plug or the number of pins on it which could be handled by a corresponding adaptor. However, it will not work with a later generation Adaptec 39320 (Ultra 320) which I have tried.

Running a non-LVD device on an LVD bus will downgrade the entire bus for sure but it should work. The link you gave also says the same thing:



If you have a multimode LVD bus and you connect a SE peripheral to it, the entire bus will switch to the SE mode.

Also from an Adaptec 39320 Features list:




The Adaptec 39320/39320A card is backwards compatible with virtually any
legacy Ultra2, Ultra, and Single-Ended (SE) SCSI device, except High
Voltage Differential (HVD) devices. However, performance is degraded to
SE speed, and SE cable length restrictions must be adhered to, when an
SE device is connected to the bus. Dual-independent channels allow LVD
and SE devices to operate separately at peak performance.


It should work with anything but HVD- very unlikely a scanner is HVD.

[Thilo Schmid]

It should work with anything but HVD- very unlikely a scanner is HVD.No, the scanner has definitly a SE connection. But it could also been an issue of the device driver. The card BIOS of the 39320 listed the scanner on boot time with the correct id and name, but Win 7 was not able to detect any scanner (nor any other (unknown) device) on it. This immediately worked after changing to a 39160 and the corresponding drivers.

[D. Bryant]

I did a search for Polacolar Insight and came up with several links to download the program. here is one.

http://download.cnet.com/Polaroid-PolaColor-Insight-Pro-for-Windows/3000-2192_4-27475.html

This is a worthless link. It eventually takes you to the Polaroid web site where one can find a PDF file instructing the installation of scanner software. IOW, not the actual drivers or scanning software for any OS.

Don Bryant

[Jonathan Taylor]

This is a worthless link. It eventually takes you to the Polaroid web site where one can find a PDF file instructing the installation of scanner software. IOW, not the actual drivers or scanning software for any OS.

No, far from worthless in my experience. They have all the drivers for Polaroid scanners-- seems totally complete OS 9 and OS X and multiple languages:

http://www.opendrivers.com/categorycompany/16/1474/scanner-polaroid-free-driver-download.html

The trick is that once you get to the final download page scroll down and use the BACKUP server. The official Polaroid links are dead as you say, but opendrivers.com lives up to it's promise. I just downloaded all the drivers for SS45 Ultra.

[Jonathan Taylor]

Polaroid actually still has the latest OS X driver on an ftp site:

ftp://ftp.polaroid.com/

[Thilo Schmid]

The Scanner has a bult-in white target for calibration (which should be cleaned from time to time) and VUESCAN obviously did not take this into account the same way as the original drivers did.I have to make a correction in regard to the "white target".
Thank you Steel for pointing this out.
The 45 ultra does not have a white target. The calibration sequence is done with the lamp directly.

[Jonathan Taylor]

Yeah, I just got a deal I couldn't refuse on SS45 Ultra-- $150 with a current unregistered version of Silverfast and the glass carrier. I'm very pleased with the results so far.

Like you, Thilo, I noticed the lamp calibration performed by the original Polaroid software. My first neg scan with Vuescan had diffused stripes along the long edges. I went through a great deal of trouble to get PolaColor Insight 5.5.1 running under MacOS 9 on G4 Powermac. It did the calibration and now neg scans from Vuescan are coming out beautifully without stripes.

Now I've just got to find the right combination of cards and adapters to get PolaColor Insight 5.6 running on my G5 Power Mac...

[Jonathan Taylor]

A few more notes on my SS45 experiences so far:

The PolaColor Insight 5.6 Read Me file says that it's not compatible with the Adaptec SCSI cards that Apple shipped with G4 PowerMacs. I can confirm that's still true; my 2930 card won't work with v5.6 under Tiger 10.4. I have a couple other cards I'm going to try... waiting for parts.

Having been a long-time on again off again Silverfast user; I'm both pleased and saddened by becoming a Vuescan convert. For the SS45 it clearly is the winner-- not only can I scan as a DNG and go right into Adobe Camera RAW, but Vuescan also supports multi-exposure on SS45. Silverfast has a multi-exposure feature but doesn't support it on SS45.

I'll report more on getting PolaColor Insight 5.6 running under MacOS X soon...

[Jonathan Taylor]

One more thing-- I've found that vibration can affect my SS45. It have it on an old, hefty wooden drafting table with my monitor and other scanners. Single sample/exposure scans come out great, but any multi-sample scans I've done are very blurry. I realized that as I type or get up from my seat the table is moving and affecting my SS45 scans. It's never been a noticeable problem for my Nikon scanners, but I'm going to be re-arranging my studio to get all scanners off the desk. I'm looking forward to having more desk space!

[hassyphoto]

Dear Sprintscan 45 U Users !

I have a SS45U, on a G4 Quicksilver with an ATTO SCSI Card. (The scanner does work on my MacPro 2.1 with VueScan and an other ATTO SCSI Card too!)

Here ist the thing, scans with Vuescan come out with lines all over the frame - an issue with Vuescan not correctly calibrating the CCD against the lamp previously to the scan(stated before). On the G4 it is like with others reported, OS9 and Insight 5.5.1 and all is well. In OS X on the very same G4 and 5.5.1 in Classic enviroment - no luck.

Has anyone of you got an known good copy of Insight 5.6 for OS X ? All download sources seem to be corrupted - the file is downloaded incompletely.

To efficiently use the G4 with the SS45U as a scan-station OS X is preferable in many ways, like networking and stability.

Thanks guys, Cheers, Jan

[nonuniform]

Dear Sprintscan 45 U Users !

I have a SS45U, on a G4 Quicksilver with an ATTO SCSI Card. (The scanner does work on my MacPro 2.1 with VueScan and an other ATTO SCSI Card too!)

Here ist the thing, scans with Vuescan come out with lines all over the frame - an issue with Vuescan not correctly calibrating the CCD against the lamp previously to the scan(stated before). On the G4 it is like with others reported, OS9 and Insight 5.5.1 and all is well. In OS X on the very same G4 and 5.5.1 in Classic enviroment - no luck.

Has anyone of you got an known good copy of Insight 5.6 for OS X ? All download sources seem to be corrupted - the file is downloaded incompletely.

To efficiently use the G4 with the SS45U as a scan-station OS X is preferable in many ways, like networking and stability.

Thanks guys, Cheers, Jan

Are you sure the problem is Vuescan? I briefly owned the 45U, and had lines using the original software. The problem turned out to be a bad SCSI cable. I've had the same problem with my drum scanner. SCSI cables go bad. That should be a sticky on some forum or other.