On Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:27:20 -0800, David Nebenzahl
wrote:

So I made up a SCSI cable for the scanner I got off the street
(literally), an Agfa SnapScan 1236. (Had to cobble up the cable since my
SCSI host adapter has a high-density socket but the scanner has the old
25-pin socket.) The cable's a bit ugly, with something of a rat's nest
of wires soldered together in the middle, but it works. Scanner works fine.

But since using the scanner, I've found that sometimes--not always--the
scanner seems to be causing a hardware fault that causes Windows blue
screens. Sometimes I can boot up and do dozens of scans; other times the
BSOD appears some time after booting, or when I access the scanner driver.

At first I wasn't sure whether the blue screens were due to the scanner
itself or the scanner driver, but I'm pretty sure it's the former, as I
never get them when I unplug the scanner.

I'm sure part of the problem can be traced to Windows 2000's rather
****-poor SCSI handling. While it is definitely better than Windows NT,
which *really* sucked in that way, it's still problematic.

And the fact that I don't have a terminator on the scanner might not be
helping, either. But as I said, when it works I can do many scans with
no problems.

I should say that this isn't a critical problem for me. I have another
scanner that works about as well (a Microtek using USB) that works about
as well; the Agfa just happens to be a bit faster and not as annoyingly
noisy. I'm mainly curious why I'm having these problems.

Any guesses? (Educated ones get more points.)

Oh, almost forgot:

o OS: Windows 2000, SP 2
o Advansys SCSI host adapter ("fast/wide"), but I'm using regular old
single-ended SCSI II. The Advansys is basically a clone of the old
Adaptec 1542, but with two adapters (16 SCSI IDs) on one card. There are
two CD-ROM drives (Plextor) on the same bus as the scanner.
o Motherboard is an Asus something-or-other, almost 10 years old


1. You should repost in one of the SCSI forums/groups. Try
'comp.periphs.scsi' for a starting point.

2. Can the home-made cable. These are available commercially and are
wired properly and will work correctly. SCSI is not the place to
cobble a cable together, it is just too sensitive.

3. No terminator? Crap, no wonder it doesn't work. You need to learn
the rules for SCSI and follow them exactly.

4. Win 2K does fine with SCSI. It is your cables, card or device.

That this thing works at all is amazing.