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


--
Who needs a junta or a dictatorship when you have a Congress
blowing Wall Street, using the media as a condom?

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