A Years Long Quest for a Great Scanner - HP Scanjet 4C
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- Опубліковано 17 лют 2023
- This is probably my longest running project , and I wasn't sure I was ever going to be able to pull it off. But after some amazing luck, I can say in this video we will be taking a look at the HP Scanjet 4C!
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That moment of horror when I realize:
* I had one of these as recently as four years ago.
* It was working and even had the original SCSI card with it.
* I donated it because of space reasons.
Absolutely stellar demonstration of this scanner's capabilities. I don't recall having nearly as much trouble setting it up but I also had that scanner from new. Thank you!
Don't feel too bad... I s-canned an extremely similar Mustek 15 years ago that was in perfect operating condition.
I used to have a BlackWidow scanner years ago, did something quite good dpi wise and that was optical. It also was able to scan very deep so you could scan PCB's with tall components and not get black patches. Got rid of it mainly because of lakc of driver supprot in either 2000 or XP. Of course these days I thibk there are Linux drivers for it. A shame it's gone really.
Space reasons as in volume or space reasons as in astronauts?
@@g00gleminus96 Yes.
But seriously, I was facing my own move while at the same time, my parents were moving too and a whole host of "Tech from my childhood" landed at donation centers. I don't regret everything that left. I didn't even initially regret the loss of this scanner. It was my first experience with SCSI and I was always impressed at how much faster and higher quality our scanner was vs. the scanners at school. I never had a desk big enough for that scanner and my parents didn't want it back.
@@g00gleminus96 ...or an OCR space recognition problem?
I use VueScan as my scanner software on modern Windows. It supports many old scanners, including my late 1990s HP scanner (HP ScanJet 5370C).
I still have a pretty good Epson flatbed with a slide/negative lamp in the lid, last driver for it is older than time. VueScan keeps it ticking over nicely. 🤓
And works in Linux too! 💕
Fun fact about the ScanJet 4C/3C: they're known to be good at making music - rather, their stepper motor. Such model is used by the Floppotron project. I also had one a few years back when making a smaller scale of the project myself :)
You can do that with literally any stepper motor in anything that uses a stepper motor. It's nothing specific to these scanners.
I have one too (I think mine is a Scanjet 5 something?), can confirm, set the SCSI ID to 0 and hold the SCAN button while you power up the scanner, then once the LED on the front flashes, let go and watch the magic happen. On the parallel port version you just need to just hold the scan button and let go when the LED flashes :)
Unfortunately my Scanjet looks worse for wear, the foam thing on the lid degraded, so I just slapped together a piece of thick cardboard, I really need to find a replacement for this kludge.
I believe one of the test tools included with the 4C plays Fur Elise using the scanner's stepper motor.
@@gorak9000 What's specific to these scanners is the wide harmonics range their motors can produce. They handle the high pitched notes pretty good in a way that's pleasant to hear. I tried a few late-90s scanners for my initial setup and ended up using a ScanJet 4C and Epson Perfection 1500 because that's what the Floppotron used and because other scanner motors would either have a non pleasant sound or a too high speed/pitch that would make the other mechanical parts skip steps and create jamming noises.
@@Anaerin That's correct! The ScanJet 5P from Alexis Trinquet (if I got the model correctly) should play Ode to Joy. I think other HP models play different Beethoven music.
I like how at the end, he talks as if the scanner is the very last in existence, and as life itself, that old scanner is a precious gift bestowed to us by the universe 🤣
He says this shit alot man. I suspect he's in the spectrum as he's incredibly intelligent but his affinities are at odds. I say as it takes one to know one haha
@@jstro-hobbytech as someone who is on the spectrum as well, I concur, he definitely gives me that vibe.
@@jstro-hobbytech Thinking someone is on the spectrum because they get a bit excited about what they enjoy might actually make YOU on the spectrum
@@100Underscores You do realize that they just said they _too_ are on the spectrum, right?
@100Underscores I said I was and I find it easy to spot others. It's not an insult. Thanks for reminding me haha. I'm not ashamed of my mental health or accompanied high iq.
The artifact you're referring to as chromatic aberration is actually misregister at the printing press due to improperly trapped artwork. Solid black areas (even text) are usually printed with other colors underneath. "4-color" black is very common in order to reproduce very dark blacks because black ink alone isn't opaque enough and appears gray in large areas. What you (and the scanners) are seeing is a tiny amount of Cyan, Magenta and Yellow hanging out from underneath the black.
It should be possible to verify this under a microscope, or even a good magnifying glass. Possible short followup segment?
That can't be entirely true, since he shows three different examples from three different scans; and all three show different aberration. The one at 40:30 shows green aberration to the top and left, purple to the bottom and right. The one at 40:43 shows red aberration to the top and blue to the bottom. The one at 40:57 shows essentially none.
These are three scans of the *same* printed material. At *best* only one of them can be accurate (probably the one at 40:57, since it's extremely unlikely the printing on this box was using 4-color black for the small text being shown).
Congratulations on being an extremely smart person
I remember in high school working on an Epson large format printer that had the typical Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow cartridges, but which also featured a separate grey, black, and photo black. I'm guessing the last was to allow it to use a more heavily pigmented black ink. I do still prefer 4-color black, though, as it has a certain visual quality similar to India Ink where it has a shimmer of the other colors that are hidden beneath it. I find that deeply appealing, even if it isn't the most color accurate way to do so. My high school also had the rather uncommon full-color crayon printers, which used a wax-resin polymer as the pigment carrier. Very unusual, took several minutes to pre-heat before printing. The printed area came out very glossy and quite good quality, with the faint smell of melted crayons and a pleasant warmth. One of my favorite weird printers.
I remember getting my first PDA!!! It was around 2001 and I paid about £400! It was an invaluable tool when trying to find illegal raves in the UK countryside! The satellite navigation was very accurate. All of the road angles were exact, and you could use it like a rally co-driver! It allowed us to avoid police roadblocks and find alternative routes instantly!
Class
First one is failing calibration because the lamp is EOL. You might be able to do a lampectomy from the busted one, and get the unit working again, though you also might be able to buy the lamps, though not from HP. Look for lamps from an Arcus scanner (where they are a spare part, and are meant to be replaced, unlike HP) and then figure out how to mount it in place of the HP one.
That Doom weapon mod segment was way too underappreciated. It even has the projectiles be the color beams it gives off to scan!
even better that he posted the link to the .wad file. that was good for some nonsense laughs in GZdoom
We used 4c's with the auto document feeders back at Wright-Patt AFB in the mid 90's on Win NT 4.0 on Adaptec 16-bit SCSI cards in Micron workstation computers. They were awesome scanners!
When I was scanning old VHS and Laserdisc covers to make custom DVD and Blu-ray sleeves, I had access to a true 1200 dpi scanner. I didn't like dealing with the Moire pattern that would always show up. I got some red, green, and blue filters I think from hobby lobby, and scanned in monochrome three times. It really helped retain the detail and reduce the Moire pattern.
Top tip to prevent moire while scanning: if an even number of DPI(let's say 600) produces moire try scanning at an odd number of DPI (let's say 300). Usually this will not produce the moiré.
I am usually not the person to like super long videos on UA-cam but you made this one so well it didn't even felt like 50 minutes.
We had one of these in my post-graduate research group in the late 90s. I used it a lot for scanning macro photos of experiments... which were then used for image analysis. I never used it over 600dpi, for the reasons you've discussed.
I'm glad you switched over to TIFF from BMP. I work in the document digitization field and TIFF is the way to go for scans.
You had the opposite experience that I had. I bought a USB scanner at Savers, with all of the original packaging materials, CD, USB cable, power cable, etc. (I think I paid a whopping $12.99 for it.) I plugged it in to a computer, it was immediately recognized, and just worked perfectly without any intervention or complication. It was a fortunate find, because shortly after that my dad passed away and I was able to post a bunch of cool old pictures we had of him, my mom, myself and my sisters on Facebook.
People don't realize how important it is to have a scanner. I always keep one around for photos I find that I want to create a cloud back-up of, and for documents that I might need to send a high quality image of.
I got a old school USB scanner off my dad, its better than the 3 in 1 printer i got for Christmas. it's biggest downside is I have to use a Windows XP machine to use it since that's its last supported os for drivers so it's also one of the many reasons why I have a dedicated XP machine for hardware and software.
Believe it or not people today actually just take pictures of documents and printed photos with their crappy phone camera, and the camera software on the phone will just do some basic perspective correction (if you do it correctly, I bet most people forget to do this). Blew my mind but apparently that's "good enough". 😐
@@s8wc3 I can do that. If I use a table, a tripod with a phone holder, good lighting, and something like Microsoft Lens (which does perspective correction and edge detection on pages). The Pixel 7 Pro camera should produce good results. Or, instead of setting up a complicated filming rig, I can put the paper on my flatbed scanner and with a button press have a high quality image. 🤣
Obviously you have to use what you have and what's on hand, but I try to use the best option I have rather than the worst.
@@Cyberdeamon depending on the scanner, you should see if vuescan has drivers for it, they have lots of drivers for old 32 bit scanners, both scsi and usb
Absolutely love your videos. The enthusiasm you have for this retro tech makes these so much more interesting to watch.
I do a lot of scanning of and reading scanned documents at various archives and other research institutions (I am a Masters student). You can tell in some runs of archived douments were done on older flourecent bulbs, as their colours slowly shift as the series and run goes on. It's amazing. Cool to see the tech they probably were using to scan them (yeah, I'm one of the first GenZ/"Zoomers").
Most modern archive scanners are overhead ones (often Zeutschel Zeta's) but they're all LED based now. Most are also 600dpi, which is fine until you start trying to scan larger doucuments with them (the higher native dpi settings really help when scanning old broadsheets that are HUGE!).
You truly deserve the Oscar for best VGA capturing! 🤓
Dude. How the hell did you get me to watch a nearly hour long video about a 30yo scanner. Kudos.
I honestly didn't think I would be interested for almost an hr. But here I am, at the end of the video, hooked on every word 🤣
This is why this man is one of the best in vintage tech.
Really nice scanner. I worked many times on an HP ScanJet III with an PowerMac and Windows when I was in university in the early to mid 90s. It truly was a great device!
Lol yep... I used one to scan in a parking permit at college and used the software to move the numbers around and the color printer to print it back out...
As long as you didn't park illegally, nobody cared because all they were doing was looking for the presence of the tag on the mirror, they didn't care what number it was! We made a bunch of money making passes... lol...
I really like old HP documents. They have a full extensive writeup on exactly how one of their impedance analyzers works. It's amazing to me they made these thorough writeups on products they made, especially when some were in a very high price bracket and used some novel ideas or processing techniques.
When a company was spending more than the price of a house on a test instrument (like early HP Spectrum Analysers that used Vector Graphics) the least you would expect is some decent manuals.
This was also before China started stealing all the IP they could get their grubby little hands on... rarely is information like this made public anymore, regardless of patents in place or not.
Amazing video Shelby, as usual the longer ones pack the most interesting things.
I longed for the "Linotype Hell" scanners like the "Saphir" or "Topaz" in the late 90s. They have a dynamic range that was well beyond the human visual capabilities and you can get them for really cheap now if you have the space 🙂
My father got a used "Apple Scanner" with 16 grayscale 300dpi. We used it extensively with his newly bought "Performa 475" from 1993 to 1997 until i got my own Computer.
a shocking trip down memory lane. in the early 90s, I used to have to do OCR on actual typewriter written manuscripts (with handwritten annotations and corrections) with a ScanJet II under DOS using OmniPage. ...and then proof-read and edit the whole mess before sending it on to DTP. what a time sink. but then again, still faster than just transcribing it in the first place
*edit* not to mention scanning and photoshopping several thousand product photos and schematics from a thousand+ page pneumatic modules manufacturer's product catalogue (they just had started expanding into the eastern European market that had just opened up, and they'd lost their original source materials). we then stitched it all together again in Ventura Publisher with Czech, Russian, Hungarian (and then some) translations
addendum, watching you trying to scan a whole page at 2400dpi: for that time, b/w drawings in "good" resolution to send to the print shop? 150dpi. greyscale pictures? 300. well good enough for standard A4/magazine/US letter printing. need higher res, maybe for a billboard? get someone with a rotary scanner to do the job. due to the amounts of data, such scan job and your XPress files would meet up at the printing plant and some professional would merge them there, then send you the litho films for each color layer to approve before issuing a pre-print
addendum #2: IDK which version of OmniPage you've got there, but theoretically it should be able to "scan" a B/W bitmap file. atleast the very early versions did, as there wasn't enough memory to both run the scanner and OCR software at the same time. tl,dr: scan full page, safe as bitmap (0/1), then run OCR on it
Wow! Thank you so much for this nostalgic view on the HP SJ4c! I used to demo these in shops, when I was sent out by HP as a so-called HP Ambassador, and I really liked this piece of hardware.
I really wanted one of these to play with, but the price tag was inhibitive for me.
Thanks again for giving this scanner a respectful and in-depth review!
I supported HP ScanJet scanners 1997-1998, and I'm sure I have the drivers and software for multiple models... somewhere. Might be on a Zip100 disk, or 3.5" disk. Seeing that old triangular SCSI care gave me a big smile! I actually got ScanJet 5 discounted because it lacked a power cable -- which HP sent me for free.
Gosh, this really takes me back.
Congratulations!
PS: When you pointed out no buttons, I actually thought, "Well, no? Why would a scanner have buttons?" I had forgotten-- even my own ScanJet!
This is such a nice in-depth video! Great work!!
Thanks for all the hard work you put into this project. I really appreciate all the details you provide in the video.
Fascinating! Back in 1996 I visited someone who had themselves a drum scanner which they used as part of their work at home. What was more incredible was the 16 fully speced Sparc Stations all hooked up just to acquire and process the image . I cant recall the RAM numbers or the scanners resolution, but for the time the numbers were mind boggling.
Your passion is fantastic, great video!
Really cool video :) That process of scanning was so advanced, splitting the light with a prism and all blew my mind. When I got my first scanner the IBM Flatbed scanner, it was so cool. My computer was completely isolated in it's own world. With that scanner I could scan things from the real world and get it into the computer. To me that was so amazing.
Splitting the light using prisms was what professional color TV cameras did from the time of invention. Some used four tubes R G B and Y (luma)
@@MrDuncl that's interesting... never knew that
Awesome video! It's very cool to see old tech still being used today!
i love your enthusiasm !
Loved this video! Thank you for all of the hard work.
Thanks for the good story telling. You hooked me with the good story about the scanner and the journey you had to take to get it going again. I might even try one of my old scanners again.
This was unexpectedly fascinating and I really appreciate you taking the time to detail this through.
This topic was right up my alley and I enjoyed it stop to start. One thing I had to learn about scanners, was that it is the sensor type and not the DPI that matter. The newer thin Canon you showed and even the enterprise Canon you showed at 47:11 have a CIS sensor (Contact Image Sensor as shown on the specs page at 47:11). But that HP uses a CCD (like a camera). While CIS can be thin and is fast, there is a difference in how the fine details are rendered. The Epson V600 is a modern CCD scanner that is cheap(ish) and has consistent results and uses a LED light source that doesn't fade over time. I scan at 800DPI for a balance of speed and accuracy. 1200DPI is really the tops I would recommend for documents/printed material. Anything over that is slow and bloated file sizes (easily over 400MB per image).
My dad had one of these in the 90ies. Thanks for the memories❤️
I worked in a computer shop when these high resolutions scanners came out.
They were a nightmare as the first thing the customers did was take them home and try scanning something at max resolution.
And then come back the next day to complain because their computer kept crashing, freezing or filled up the hard drive.
I feel old. But I feel happy to see all your vid's. Thank you for your work, it brings me some good memories.
I remember this one from my computer class back in school in the mid to end 90s. I absolutely adored it.
It must've been brand new back then. Wow! 🤯
Nice nostalgic tech, thanks for the video 😊
I had a Scanjet back in the day, though a different model. Thanks for the memories!
Neat, this is the first flatbed scanner i ever used, in high school photography class in 1995. Was connected to a Mac IIci with Photoshop 3.0. I made my first web pages on it.
I really appreciate the passion and dedication that went into making this video.
Love the dedication to getting an old scanner to work. You are well on your way to having a deck of HP Scanjet SCSI controller cards. This is why I watch channels like this. I also remember using one of these back in the day, the design is quite memorable.
I had a SCSI HP Scanjet on my work machine in the late 90's. I was a web designer/developer (still am) before digital photography, so I used the HECK out of it for projects. It was insanely fast, and turned out great scans. The machine I had was an absolute SCSI beast. I had that scanner, a Sony floptical, SyQuest 44/88, Plextor 4x burner, and FOUR double-stacked 2GB RAID drive enclosures. on the SCSI2-UFUW daisy chain. At the time it was probably a 10,000 dollar or more setup. Dual Pentium Pro 200 with 4 gigs of ram, it was by far the most beastly computer I'd ever seen at the time, and I loved it so. Had a 21" Sony Trinitron 1600x1200 monitor and the SCSI controller was a PCI Adaptec SCSI2. Even the internal hard drive was SCSI, which made it a complete ripper.
How the heck did I just watch a 50 minute video without even noticing it was 50 minutes long... well done capturing my attention!
I've watched half a dozen of your videos now and--just subscribed. I've always loved The Computer Chronicles, LGR, and others, but you got something great here. I would just like that say thanks for this content, super informative and very enjoyable! :)
I never thought a video about a scanner could be so interesting. Thanks!
Great video!
If only you had a spectroradiometer to take all the necessary measurements of the bulb's output, then maybe you could work on creating a replacement bulb assembly using an led strip and tuned to the same output characteristics.
It's called a spectrophotometer, or more commonly just a spectrometer. Never heard of anyone calling it a spectroradiometer! I'm pretty sure those are all words made up by the color calibration industry to make their spectrometers sound "special" and "extra expensive"
@@gorak9000 spectroradiometer and spectrophotometer are not the same thing.
@@gorak9000 spectrophotometer’s output is relative to human vision; a spectrometer (which is not the same as a spectroradiometer: the latter includes optics, the former does not) is absolute. So they’re really three different, but closely related, measurement instruments.
@@tookitogo I own a "spectrophotometer" which as far as I know is actually just a spectrometer with a calibrated light source for measuring reflective things (like print / paper) in addition to emissive sources (like light sources / displays or projectors). A spectrometer uses a prism or a diffraction grating to split the wavelengths of the light and uses a linear sensor (CCD or CMOS) to detect all the different wavelengths in the split light. Using alternate software (ArgyleCMS) you can get a full spectrum intensity plot out of it, exactly what you get out of a spectrometer. Hence why I think a "spectrophotometer" is just a made up instrument name for the "calibration industry" that's really just a spectrometer. I know there are also "color sensors" that only use 3 photodiodes with R G and B filters over them - essentially a 1 pixel digital camera that only measures intensity of R G and B, and thus can infer 'color' from the data, but isn't actually a spectrometer in that it can't measure any wavelengths directly. It uses software and the response curves of the R G and B filters to generate data. So I can see there being 2 types of instruments - those that measure all the wavelengths by splitting the light, and those that only measure RGB, but I don't see how there's 3 types...
I had one of these when they first came out. I swear this was the best scanner I have used.
Thank you I quite enjoyed the video on this 🙏
I used this scanner in 2000, I absolutely loved it, it was very high quality built and fast. I loved the minimalistic design too.
It would be cool to see this hooked up to a HP/UX workstation. Like a HP 9000 725/100 or something similar.
AAh, the memories! Just before launch, we had a lovely lady from Greeley, Colorado come out to explain this scanner to us. For some obscure reason, the launch was in the former Ansett bus terminal in Brisbane Australia. The floor was covered in carpet, but was not even. Despite that, it was a launch of a brand new product which was world-beating, and I loved being a part of that.
OMG. I remember that. My first consulting gig was finding, installing, and teaching my client to use one of these.
Small concern. You should test a scanner with a true analog photo, not a print, a print like a jewel case insert or a manual will be offset printed which is already ugly if magnified. Or just put something not printed in there like one of the ISA cards or whatever that has a flat face to see... you're adding interpolation to an already rasterized print. (EDIT: I was just about 20 minutes into the video, I see you addressed that later... good job :D)
I bought both of those games, brings back memories. Love this
Love that case, I used it for all my friends and family builds back in the day, and still have at least two in my office ;-)
Interesting vid. Thanks for sharing
I used to own this model back in the day. The first time I used it, it blew my mind. You know what, it still does.
I've thrown one of these in landfill during covid lockdown whilst renovating my father's old office. It hadn't been used in years but was in the cupboard with reams of paper stacked on top.
Doh!
I had one of these. Best scanner ever!
I worked for a school district as a computer tech during the time when these were brand new. I helped unbox and set a few of these up and it was always a pleasure to use them. I specifically remember that 16 bit card with the downwards angle too. Great scanners, we even had a transparency adaptor for it. Good to see one still out there and working!
The Big Metal Plate bit was great!
Loved my HP ScanJet 4C. Was my first scanner, bought it during my 2nd year at graphic design college. At the same time I bought also my first external scsi zip drive (it was EPSON branded). Combined with Photoshop 4.0 and CorelDraw (can''t remember version) I started my affair with digital design. Still going strong :)
An old scsi scanner and linux saved my bacon many years back for a job I was doing. The sound of that HP working brings back memories of the days at the arts org. i worked at. Good video!
Good video. Thank you
All of HP's industrial design from that era is gorgeous. Their Unix workstations in particular
ahahahahaha that smile when you scanned to your linux machine. nice work sticking with it, man. keep rocking. love your videos.
I miss my old HP 4C, SCSI interface died on it, HP 5P I replaced it with never seemed as good on the colour accuracy, but as a bonus the 5P had the ode to joy Easter Egg demo which was pretty cool, SCSI card wise I used the Adaptec 2940 PCI cards on PC with win2k and xp and it also worked on my PowerMac 7200 on MacOS 8.6.
I still use an HP6300C scanner on linux. The 6300C is basically the 4C in a different plastic box with a USB 1.1 interface instead of SCSI. I actually like how the square box of the 4C looks. It sounds identical to this 4C when it's scanning. I use it with XSane and it works great. I also use a huge Fujitsu scanner I picked up super cheap that can scan 11x17 sheets too. That one also works just fine in linux with XSane. In windows, I don't think the 6300c has been supported since XP or Win2k. They purposely didn't release drivers for newer versions of windows just to force people to throw perfectly working scanners out and buy new ones.
Ok, after watching the video right to the end, I think the 6300c is a slightly newer design. The optics are more compact and all on the head, the tube is a narrow ccfl lamp, not the larger tube that's in the 4C. But I still think they are very closely related - probably just one or 2 hardware revisions newer than the 4C
I love this!
I had one of those. Was great.
God this thing was a beast... I loved using mine for photo scanning when I used to do desktop publishing and web design work
I remember selling these scanners at future shop. Lots of returns and setup was not fun. When it worked people were really happy with it. We had many refurbs come back of that model.
27:30 that brings me back, exactly as I remember my old flatbed scanner used to do.
Hi Shelby. I am also Shelby. Glad you finally got a working scanner!
Ah, that takes me back. So many vendors. I worked at a Mac-based DTP shop and we spent so much time testing and figuring out calibrations, and doing them regularly to fight color drift. The last shop I worked at actually got a Kodak Prophecy system and this high-end laser drum scanner for industrial quality. At the other extreme, I remember something called Thunderscan that you placed inside an Apple ImageWriter printer and it would make the print head move back and forth and the platen to advance so it would scan documents that way. Slow as hell, of course, and pretty low res and I think bw/grayscale only.
I recall someone, maybe Canon, making a printer where you could swap the pint head out for a scan head. Also the cheapo hand scanners and even motorised hand scanners which would drive themselves along in a plastic tray. At the turn of the century with cheap MFPs every charity shop was full of parallel port scanners. I paid more for a replacement PSU for a Mustek than the scanner itself.
Wow: had this box in my place for many months to scan in 1000's of pages of employee records as part of a intranet project for a Dutch company. It was part of my first project at my new employer and together we started offering internet/intranet projects to our customers. After this project I got hired by a regional cable TV networks company who wanted to start with cable -internet and assisted with the initial setup and did setup the first servers for email and home-page hosting and also designed the backbone for the Com21 systems... Stayed at that customer for 3years but never forget that 1st scanning and intranet project there .. changed my life up to today 👍👍
I had one of these back in the late '90s. I worked at a large company, and found it discarded. It was amazing the waste that place generated. I don't remember what SCSI card I used, but I do remember that I never had any issues. It just worked, and very well. Ultimately I rid of it years later due to it being SCSI, and not wanting to deal with that interface anymore moving forward. I do miss it sometimes. It was a giant behemoth of a thing, but was a pleasure to use.
Wow! this brings back memories! i had one of these way back when and ended up selling it for a USB Scanner years later... after watching your video I wish I had kept it. :P
Brings back memories and had a chuckle when mentioning the terminator switch :) while my dad tried to installed it and made the same assumption as you, as he didn't read the instruction and I was looking at why it didn't work and I just flipped the switch and he was like hey it works now. I used one back in the day with my dad on a Windows NT workstation.
a fascinating seldom almost one hour long video about .... a scanner.
thank you.
I have an HP 3570c that I still use to these days, so that's 20odd years old, external PSU failed pretty early on.
Biggest plus of this scanner is the very accurate scanning and depth of scan. I can easily put anything on the flat bed and it'd scan hyperfocal from the flat bed plate.
Absolute peach to scan electronic boards and non easily foldable volumes.
I just finished scanning about 3000 developed photos from my grandma's house. Can say that having digital cameras is a blessing
As someone who installed and worked with this scanner it breaks my heart a little to hear this described as retro but I appreciate your enthusiasm
Color-30b instead of Sharp Millions of Colors for the 600dpi image. It probably doesn't change the findings or conclusions significantly though.
My heart sank when you described that one final fatal flaw. An easily serviceable, not-maliciously-designed device with a 100% failure rate in just a few decades is always sad. And that's not to mention the poor reputation fluorescent lamps have now *in general*...
Fluoros have a poor reputation? I know they're not that great to work under and contain mercury but they're very energy-efficient when used continuously
I have one of these scanners in my basement with other old equipment. I even have the transparency too for it (it was an add on lid that you could swap out and it would light up during a scan. Used it to scan hundreds of slides for a friend years ago.) It was an amazing working scanner when I used it last.
Wow! I sold and installed a few of these back in the early 90's... The design software we were using them with cost $7,500AUD back then. How the times have changed... Great vid!
We had a 4c in my elementary school computer lab. I loved using it.
The scanner wars of HP, Epson, Canon, Microtek, and UMAX. My old High School had a ScanJet 4C in the computer lab in '96. My folks had a Microtek for their Mac. The HP was super dog-slow, but the scan quality was great for its day.
This was my first flatbed scanner, glad you got it working, every scanner I've had ever since has felt cheap and nasty compared to this.
We had one in school by 1996, hooked up to a cutting edge 75Mhz Pentium. Had no idea how expensive it was, but HP provided stuff at a discount.
Youdid a great job. I so remember using them...... so so so slow
just had to text my dad bc this looked so familiar and i was like “wasnt this the scanner we had in the basement my entire childhood?” and yes, yes it was! it’s funny because we talked about it a couple weeks ago too.
I bought a Trust scanner a long time ago but at the time I just took it for granted and didn't think about how good it was 20 years ago. I found some scans recently and they are absolutely phenomenal, the detail and depth in them are outstanding. I'm going to check my loft to see if I still have it.
Great thing it work out for you :)