Archival Grade Flatbed Book Scanner - Avision FB6080E

[@CantankerousDave]

There's a channel here called Book Scanning that shows a DIY v-shaped scanning rig with twin plexiglass platens. That's pretty much what library archivists use.

[@casev799]

Just looked it up, and will watch after this, but I definitely can see some similarities with ones in videos posted by Internet Archive. Definitely interested 👍

[@fsmoura]

Awesome, thanks for the tip 👍

[@JackieBright]

I suspect that's what he meant by "getting creative" with two modified cannon flatbeds

[@Catheidan]

yeah, Archival and Flatbed scanner is an oxymoron. an Archival scanner opens the book as little as possible.

[@redheadsg1]

I work in library on archive scanners and i never used v shaped glass plates. Why ? Because they are heavy and it can take a toll on your hands and wrists when you scanning 4-8 hours per day. Also the other problem (al least with our v shaped glass plate) is that it leaves black lines where the spine is and it is really really annoying to look at it. Also when you are using v shape mode on scanner, book tends to slide of the sides and you can get crooked scanned pages. And you need to support the book to get pages flat on the glass. If you are interested, we are using ImageAccess Bookeye 4 (with v shaped glass) and 5 (archive versions) and Zeutschel OS 12002.

[@ssjaken]

Ex commercial printer here. Photos that going accross two pages are known as "gutter jumps". Can be pretty difficult when doing a lot of books

[@teh_supar_hackr]

Those Gutter Jumps can be super annoying to get around without cutting the pages out of the book which I really don't like doing.

[@paulmurgatroyd6372]

It also depends on the makeup of the folios of the book... if large sections are used, such as 64pp or higher, the multiple folding can cause a large variance in the size of the trim on the binder, going from the outside to the inside of the section.

[@Matlockization]

Yeah, but you'll finish the book in half the time !

[@computer_toucher]

"It's only 600 dpi" and I immediately thought the same as you: That's *true, honest* DPI. Which worked for the most picky print houses for ages and ages.

[@paulwomack5866]

A lot of coffee-table books were printed from images at a mere 300 DPI. (life long professional pre-press software guy here...)

[@trevoro.9731]

Many scanners had 1200 and more true DPI. This one is a trash, as it has an old USB2.0.

[@patrickweggler]

From my time at the university library, the colleagues, doing this kind of work for a living there, are using, for the highest quality, a quartz glass sheet and a SLR camera

[@FredrikOstrozanszky]

Yeah, I visited the national library of my country and they use pretty much the same. A DIY setup with a V-shaped cradle, with two special glasssheets, two dslr cameras with lenses and a foot pedal trigger. They claimed it was better and cheaper than commercially available products. Depends on the object of course. Some documents are too fragile even for this type setup.

[@pausmth]

I just wanted to thank you for doing things like scanning old documents and putting them on archive. I know lots do, but I'm appreciative of everyone that does, and the tips you have for it yourself. Thanks for everything!

[@nickwallette6201]

I once thought, "why don't more people do this?" This series of videos has been a pretty comprehensive answer.

[@Consequator]

the edge is from ye olden days to prevent outside light from coming in. But scanners work differently than they used to due to optical sensors becoming better and more affordable. Also it is often the bundled software, that only works with the 'specialized' scanner, that makes it worth wile for book scanning / archives.

[@jdrissel]

Many years ago I did some work to make a Fuji scanner work with an odd flavor of UNIX (Trusted Solaris). The software the customer wanted to use not only did OCR, it also did font recognition. It produced a PDF output that was searchable and almost perfect. You were also just a hotkey from seeing the scan. The one we had for development did double sided sheet feed. It worked so well that someone brought in a bandsaw to cut spines off. The thing went so fast that we had to build a sheet catcher because the pages would fly all over the room.

[@toshihitsu1989]

Had used to use one of those Fuji flat top with a feeder where I used to work and they were really great Scanner. Very expensive but got the job done The scanner was back from 2012 or 2013 I don't exactly remember the model number but I know it was a Fuji

[@Cybernetic_Systems]

Please don’t replace the light source with LED’s, high end professional scanners still use Cold Cathode Lamps because the CRI is consistent across the width of the light strip and there’s no PWM flicker to counter with image processing. LED’s are used in less expensive units for cost reasons only.

[@ffamii]

Love scanner videos! I have a Plustek A4 one and it's my favorite but there a really big deadzone at the edge :( and the software sucks. It seems like there is always someting with these things.

[@JORGETECHJorge]

XSane is actually the only scanning software I use, even though it has an archaic interface I love the amount of options it has and it doesn't try to hide them from the user like more "simple" scanning software, I actually prefer it to most scanning software on Windows, specially the garbage ones that manufacturers provide. I really want to see the ideas you have on modding Canoscan scanners, those are so common you can actually find working ones in the garbage. BTW, decent film scanners also have insane prices as the document archival ones, they also don't seem to be much different from "normal" scanners. This has led me to photograph negatives instead of buying one of those, slower for sure but much cheaper if you have a decent DSLR or mirrorless.

[@lachlanlau]

good film scanners have infrared dust removal e.g. Digital ICE

[@gorak9000]

I wish xsane was a little smarter about auto adjustments though - at least with some scanners, it always auto adjusts too dark and I have to muck with the brightness and contrast sliders (or the "whitelevel / blacklevel color picker above the preview) to get things better.

[@jnharton]

@@gorak9000It's probably that there are differences between the hardware units that xsane doesn't know about and can't easily compensate for.

[@alangfp]

the black background to eliminate what's showing on the back BLEW MY MIND!!!! Wow! Never thought of it. I'll always learn something new, no matter what... Thanks!

[@sryx]

It's exactly for content like this that I happily joined your Patreon :)

[@ChrisJackson-js8rd]

usually when you're buying something like that as a library, where it's going to be under constant use and abuse, most of what you're paying for is warranty and servicing. the price is several times the hardware cost because customers will often be receiving several units before all's said and done.

[@TMS5100]

Destructive scanning is the way to go if the book isn't irreplaceable. And those czur scanners are awful.

[@WedgeStratos]

This feels similar to my instance. I was lucky and scored an Epson Expression 10000XL Photo scanner. The 10K line of scanners are just as expensive, moreso for models like the Photo one I have, since it has an upside-down scanbed for negatives or x-rays. At the very least, they're from Epson and work without issue for me using Skanlite. It might just be the driver implementation if the Avision's having an issue. Or that I'm using the Flatpak. Either way's possible.

[@kanalnamn]

VueScan is not free, but it's available for Linux and handles more or less every scanner there is. I haven't yet found a scanner that it couldn't handle without drivers, and that includes A3 and negative scanners. I've only used the Windows-version, and it's worth every penny.

[@voltare2amstereo]

Yep, have a licence for vuescan.

[@geofftottenperthcoys9944]

Not paying from $40AUS to $179AUS for a scanner program.

[@egbront1506]

@@geofftottenperthcoys9944 I understand that but it is also available for Mac and the options and tweaks it has are way more than come with the clunky software bundled with scanners.

[@JonBarker-Crimsonleech-]

Just checked vuescan drivers for that avision and it should work straight out of the box with linux

[@JonBarker-Crimsonleech-]

Get a lifetime license, worth it

[@joshuaanhalt3180]

There is another technology for scanning books, using a prism and a mild vacuum or static cling, you can scan both pages simultaneously, and essentially the entire crease. ScanRobot is the patented commercial option, but there have been numerous DIY/Maker versions. (Two CCD or line scanners are placed ontop of the prism, each sees out one of the other edges of the prism. This assembly is moved into the crease, and pulled straight up. A vacuum or static holds the pages against the prism. The book does not need to be opened very much.)

[@mavluke3633]

can you provide links/details on the DIY maker versions? I would love to build one for myself.

[@AegisPupus]

0:15 OMG I worked on making an asynchronous interface for that scanner because the TWAIN interface was not Windows friendly. 1993... good times...

[@Krawacik3d]

You spoiled me. I now hate every scanner that I came across for not having those obvious features.

[@herrpez]

PlusTek owner checking in. Definitely not compatible, and likely never will be. I'm tempted to get an iVina now just for that reason... That being said, keeping an old WIndows XP virtual machine around isn't the worst thing in the world. Edit: Strike that. Watched the rest of the video now. I no longer feel compelled to side-grade my setup with an iVina (or any other rebadged version); seems like my WinXP VM solution with my second-hand PlusTek is just fine in the grand scheme of things. Definitely interested in the cheapo flatbed hack though. 😄

[@K-o-R]

Personally I'm in the debind camp. Getting the best scan including the bits in the book curve is the most important thing. Depending on the book I might even lay-flat comb-rebind it afterwards to make it easier to use in future (very good for textbooks; obviously many of these are not really in short supply).

[@MorbidEel]

Have you compared that to systems that project a grid/lines on the pages to help correct for the curves?

[@K-o-R]

@MorbidEel Fortunately it's no longer my problem, but I only ever had access to a big standard photocopier/scanner. One booklet that was A4 pages as A3 sheets with normal staples was an interesting task for the ADF, but the result was excellent (once I flipped half the pages...).

[@dancingwiththedogsdj]

Sir, your videos are outstanding! I love the detail and all you put into them with information and many different aspects of whatever you are discussing at the time. I love the setups you show and just everything that goes along with it. The longer videos are definitely my favorite, but I love 'em all! Have a wonderful day!! 😁

[@Frog-ko6uu]

Have you tried NAPS2 as your scanning software? It’s my go-to on macOS, and it has Linux builds available.

[@t94xr]

Windows Support is continued using VueScan.

[@JonBarker-Crimsonleech-]

Just do us all a favour and get Vuescan, at least check it out in a video and tell explain why SANE is better or not

[@Jesselovespinball]

I really enjoy the deep dives you do into these different electronics . You do your research and not only that you are able to share it in an eloquent and informative way that keeps me engaged. Well done sir ! And that compaq hat is awesome!

[@astral16]

We use a canon dr-6030c at work and there’s a reason it cost over $10,000. Its fast, doesn’t jam, and is completely serviceable still to this day.

[@Blackadder75]

its available for around $4000 since 2013, not 10k

[@AttilaTheHun333333]

How does a scanner jam?

[@tezcanaslan2877]

@@AttilaTheHun333333by installing paper wrong, i assume?

[@krzbrew]

Autofeeder may (and will) jam.

[@Shiunbird]

My grandfather owns one of the thin Canon bus-powered scanners and they are EXCELLENT. Of course, Canon doesn't support them anymore - Mac support ended at 10.7 I think, but they work perfectly out-of-box in Linux and it's just beauty. When you are done, they go into a deeper drawer and disappear until you need them next time. Light, reasonably fast, image is OK, no power bricks to deal with.

[@garfieldepicmoments]

Note that those use CIS sensors, which don't go above 300 DPI (the scanner will fake higher resolutions with interpolation) and anything that isn't completely flat against the page will be out of focus. They're still good for scanning completely flat (never been folded) pages if that's all you need to do.

[@Shiunbird]

@@garfieldepicmoments thanks for the info! Yes - it is mostly used to scan invoices, letters, etc..

[@kinggamer19]

as the owner of a plustek It's a really, really good zero-edge scanner, Though it's sad to see how they mostly died out after 2010 in favor of those really bad quality top camera scanners (so if you need to scan books without ripping them apart, it's always best to find one used or like in the video the library is another good place to have zero-edge) also im all for the DIY route, seeing a video on it from you would be legendary since theres not a whole lot and the ones that exist are not very helpful and quite old.. like almost a decade old

[@TastyBusiness]

I could stand to get a good scanner and start archiving some documents.

[@RetroShare2]

I wonder, if VueScan would work with that.

[@Ni5ei]

2:57 I don't like having to cut up a book for scanning either but it's 20 times faster and you can just drop in a 100 page book, press the button and walk away. That's worth it if you have to scan many books.

[@gregrich91]

got my dad a Epson perfection v600 to scan ancient family pictures, and WHOOOWEEE it both scans slow AF but also if you pick the wrong settings the files are like 4GB each

[@RowanHawkins]

You are also running over usb2.0 on this device. That will affect its speed. There is no onboad buffer which is part of the reason for the stepper speed. However scanning at 600 DPI is just overkill on paper. Heck when Kodak only used 300dpi for photo scanning. Otherwise you get film grain noise.

[@SonDo91]

Do you have problems with glossy pages on the CZUR? So far the results from CZUR magazine scans have been underwhelming for me

[@olik136]

I have to scan architectural drawings sometimes that are bigger than DIN A3- which is the biggest size for a normal flatbed scanner I can get here. So I have to fold the old plan into smaller shapes that fit into the scanner, which has an edge all around the scanning area.. and then put everything together in software.. which also sucks since the rotation never matches... the scanner in the video would make all of that a bit better.. I have worked with big format scanners- but they are completely unaffordable even for most print shops and they also tend to distort the image quiet a lot.. which is a problem with technical drawings.

[@paulwomack5866]

Depending on how often you need to do this, you might consider a camera on a tripod with a panoramic head, and open source panorama software (e.g. Hugin). This would allow easy capture up to around 40" x 30", 600 DPI.

[@JonnyRobbie]

Uh, what version of xsane are you using? I see the histogram bug for which I submitted a pr and it was accepted a loooong itme ago.

[@Setupthemabomb]

My office got few Avision A3 flatbed/ADF scanner, those things cost around $4000 back in 2009, it still works and produce scan like it was brand new, on the other hand, i used $600 A3 Brother all in one printer-flatbed/ADF scanner-copier from yesteryear, those thing prints sucks, scans like 90s photocopier machine, and such an ink-guzzler it never allowed to used as a copying machine.

[@tnaxpw]

I'm really looking forward the Canon reviews. I have like a million books that are not in print for probably a over a decade now and was looking forward to start archiving them, but the price on overhead ones was just killing me.

[@TheRetroBristolian]

I've had 3 of those Canon Lide scanners over the years and they're a fantastic little scanner, I removed the back edge/lid on my newest one to start experimenting as well. on my particular model it looks like the plastic edges hold the glass in position and would need to be replaced with something else to hold the glass. I'm really looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

[@nightmare5927]

Dude I could not give less of a shit about scanners but the enthusiasm you have for the stuff you cover is so contagious and makes everything you talk about interesting. Helps that as a gamer I love the idea of preservation(like with Roms and emulators) so there is some relatability there but still! You should teach.

[@nonsuch]

Why would you compromise your scanning (or any other job) just so you can use Linux? It's obviously not good for everything. Scanner support, drivers, and software is great on Windows and Mac. You can easily create and run a portable version of Windows with Hasleo's "WinToUSB" which lets you run Windows completely off an external USB stick or HD so you can use it on any system. Or do a Grub multiboot on an external drive and just use it when needed. I like having Windows, Mac, and Linux systems for different tasks to make life easy.

[@paul_boddie]

Decent scanners have been well supported by Linux for over twenty years and still are. Why would you compromise your computing (and scanning) experience running something else?

[@Avelanche]

I love you Shelb. You are a gift to humanity. I always like to think about the person that is extremely interested in specific things that nobody else would spare 2 seconds of thought towards, and here i am enthralled by a story of a man that went to a library to document and rate their public scanner. I watch your videos with as much wonder and joy as i would the Lord of the Rings movies. Thank you for existing!

[@Cyberdeamon]

Had a pair of old Acer ScanPrisa 640u (one usb and a printer port) back in the day that wouldn't go past Windows XP for driver support but damn it could scan a sh!t ton better than all the 3-in-1's that are out today

[@SuperDwango]

I'm surprised someone hasn't cooked up some opensource scanning solution that could be used with any overhead mounted high-resolution camera.

[@paulwomack5866]

You clearly haven't googled, say "diy book scanner"

[@MannyDer]

I have an Epson ET-8550 and it has an amazing scanner. Has to be the best I've used

[@DoRC]

This reminds me of when I used to do IT for our municipality. I was in charge of the scanning and archiving software and hardware. I can't even remember what the scanners were some sort of very expensive Fujitsu thing but we a document management program called hummingbird which was absolutely awful and was basically always broken.

[@gorak9000]

The solution is to use the Fujitsu scaner with xsane in linux - I have a fi-5750C and it's an amazing scanner - crazy fast! It scans at 600dpi faster than most scanners preview scan at low resolution, and the full duplex sheet feeder (with built in page heater to eliminate wrinkles) is stupid fast!

[@Capturing-Memories]

I like the black color of the underside of the lid, It avoids having reflection or bleeding of the opposite side of single documents with white underside covers scanners, Very smart.

[@paulwomack5866]

And real easy to retrofit to an existing scanner :-)

[@Capturing-Memories]

@@paulwomack5866 Yes, but I like it when I don't have to modify stuff.

[@sebastian19745]

Interesting subject, I once started to scan all my books of electronics (I had more than 100), with my (by then) HP scanner. It went very slow, and I gave up the idea. When I got another flatbed scanner, an Canon, I started again but again I gave up. Note that this was done in early 2000 on a P2/3 computer with Windows 98. However, I have a question: What happened with your computer? The old one that weights a ton? I am still waiting to see something about it.

[@Fir3Chi3f]

The best part of this video was seeing the documents and your process for getting things on the internet archive. I'm excited to see your experiment!

[@donniecatalano]

Back in my days a decent scanner could not be less that at least 2 grand :-(

[@pirrracy]

Tried running it with Vuescan? Also... is that little ledge magnetized for paperclips by any chance?

[@jfbeam]

I was going to mention those CanoScan things. They can be a little slow at higher resolutions, but the lowres "preview" scans are lightning fast. I've not scanned many books, but magazines never gave me any problems - line the page up at the (0,0) corner and the binding gets cropped out. It does mean a lot of editing, but you'll be doing that anyway. (unless you can be meticulous in placing the page, then the cut is the same on every page, and that can be programmed.) For pictures, I have this HP thing; no drivers required as it presents as a standard storage device containing a jpg. (the "driver" just watches that drive for new files and copies them.)

[@ThisisTechie]

I’m so glad KZbin recommended this to me. Screw those big corporations that are basically reselling used parts for 5x what it’s supposed to be valued, honestly thinking to start an independent company because of this.

[@secondarycontainment4727]

I watched the Last Star Fighter with my son. Been watching the movies of my childhood aligning them when he's at that same age that I was when they came out... He figured out that the Beta, the Simuloid, was in his words a "clone" even before Beta took the form of Alex. These kids man...

[@artofnoise5013]

I remember using a scanner like this in college around 2006-07 to scan books. Pretty sure it was a Plustek.

[@EndOfLineTech]

“Windows 3.1 like programs” “chore to use” we get it, you’re a Linux user. You only have to say it once, not over and over. Also what a Linux poser Graphical-desktop environment? Programs you didn’t write? Uh okay 💀

[@arjovenzia]

I'm not sure why scanner software is so abysmal, but that just seems to be the case. Never a fun time. This somewhat series does make me appreciate so much more the fact we can nowadays just Google a manual for about anything. Somebody once had to sit down n digitise that, didn't realise how much of a chore it could be. I shall be much more forgiving in the future, whilst pixel peeping on a schematic from the 70's. Is that a zero, eight, perhaps a bee. That it exists on the intertubes is awesome. Go hard my dude, this level of dedication to nerdery gives me some hope.

[@chaos.corner]

Twain was supposed to fix that. A standard interface so that you could have competition and the pick of quality scanning software. Instead, we still end up using the buggy bundled stuff (My Epson software doesn't preserve when you change the scan directory. It always reverts to Pictures).

[@PBMS123]

Technically there is a better option for book scanning that is non destructive. Actual archives use them. Book scanners that use a slight vacuum, and have an open scan array, that sucks two pages up from the middle of an open book and scans the pages while moving upwards. Like the Treventus ScanRobot® 2.0 MDS AUTOMATIC BOOK SCANNER

[@TrinomCZ]

I can find a brand new Avision FB6280E for about $1000 without taxes locally in Europe (without additional SW). I assume, that's the normal asking price for that unit. Generally speaking, finding a A3 flat bed is neither easy nor cheap. I just checked several sellers locally and they ask about $500 for the cheapest A3 flat bed scanner, the second to cheap was in thousands of dollars. From what I found in the past, the cheapest way to get a A3 flat bed scanner is to buy a multi function printer with one attached. No idea, why it is this way, but it is. PS: Look at Mustek A3 Scanner S 2400 Plus, that one may be a reasonable option too. If you can find one.

[@thisvideoisgreat4289]

Could you lower sound level of printer at end of the video. It scares me every time, I'm using headphones and it hurts a little.

[@app0the]

I have actually just picked up a LiDE at the local hardoff for roughly 50¢. The frame is not integral on the glass, so you can just snap off the side bezels which are held by simple double sided tape. It however also must be calibrated with VueScan on every power on, is *very* slow, and color reproduction is absolute garbage due to it's LED nature combined with some weird multi reflector stuck on top of the LED strip in place of a diffuser, so I would say it's worth no more than what I paid for it...

[@UnrealVideoDuke]

I have a Canon Lide flatbed scanner and would love to have the proper drivers to install to Win10. Had an old IBM branded flatbed scanner that used the parallel port and that was the best flatbed scanner that I've seen. The IBM scanner was able to capture clear images that had physical depth to them. It was not a 3D scanner but it had a good 1/2" depth of vision from the glass. I was surprised when I used it to image old ISA cards. Unfortunately I don't have the IBM scanner anymore a friend needed to image their family photos.

[@voltare2amstereo]

Vuescan. It works with these canon scanners, mine was my go to until it fell off a shelf

[@paul_owen]

God bless you

[@HelloKittyFanMan]

"LDS bundled PC"? "LDS software"? "LDS scanner"? Ha, sounds like a customization made by The Church of Jesus Christ of *L* atter- *D* ay *S* aints! But what does it _really_ stand for in this context? "Library document scanning"?

[@marcodambrosio1563]

I sell books online and need good color photos. Actually the CZUR seems to be disastrous from many points of view, especially regarding color images. I need front and back photos of the cover, and some internal images. I haven't found a suitable solution yet. A normal mid-level camera cannot overcome shadows and I don't have professional lighting, which is too expensive and requires technical skills. The flatbed scanner on my multifunction printer is inadequate and too small. I haven't tried a lightbox but I'm afraid that the reflections from the LEDs are inevitable and in any case I would have difficulty keeping the pages open and taking the photo with the other hand. From this point of view, the CZUR seemed excellent. I thought it was fast, guaranteed good lighting and good rendering, and cropped images well. But from what I have learned, the software often goes crazy and has a variety of serious imperfections. There are high quality A3 flatbed scanners like the ones you mentioned but they cost thousands of dollars. I'm disoriented.

[@johntorres1517]

Oh! I have very extensive experience in scanning an insane amount of documents, quickly, and in decent quality. What you want is a duplex, feeder, SCSI (scuzzy) scanner with OCR. Or a modern equivalent for scanning speed. At around 2005-2011 I worked for a medical billing company that had to keep 10 years of records. We had a literal warehouse indexed of boxes and boxes of mail correspondence, bills, checks etc. All of which we digitized. I'm talking cartoonishly large piles of paper on my desk, Of which I could scan thousands in a day. The ideal method is to remove staples, and prepare the pages in order, even cutting where necessary. Then you place it on the feeder and it would scan insanely fast, while also applying OCR (Optical Character Recognition). We could end up with high (or low) quality pages with tech search available on all of them. It worked wonderfully and allowed us to take decades worth of documents and store them digitally. The entire warehouse was eventually completely scanned and closed. A successful venture. An entire geographic region of very specific type of medical billing for most hospitals in the area digitized.

[@ocsrc]

The old SCSI scanners from the early 90s, that were legal size, and they were really nice, but they were incredibly slow. They came with a 50 pin to 25 pin cord that plugged into the standard LPT printer port. I bought a combination SCSI ISA card then a PCI SCSI card that had an internal 50 pin header and a SCSI 68 pin internal cable, and an external 50 pin connector and a 68 pin external connector. The software had drivers that talked to the printer port and communicated to the scanner through the cable. I never tested the cable to see if there was any electronics in the cable. I don't think it does. I think SCSI 50 connector has pins that are able to output and input LPT data I never searched about this but it was sold as an SCSI scanner that connected directly to the printer port. SCSI was really nice for the 90s and faster than IDE But it was more complicated The SCSI CD-RW was nicer but the IDE CD-RW was a lot simpler. Being able to just slide it in and connect to the existing IDE cable and not need anything except for the software program to make it work and the SCSI CDRW was 400 dollars The IDE CDRW white box was 99 dollars That takes me back to the early 90s

[@PileOfEmptyTapes]

Are you sure you aren't misremembering things? Using a DB-25 for external SCSI devices used to be popular, but it had nothing to do with the parallel port. Scanners with both interfaces still had separate connectors for them (with a 36-pin Centronics for parallel), at least the Epson camp definitely did.

[@ocsrc]

@@PileOfEmptyTapes you might be right. I think there was a 36 pin connector the 25 pin LPT cable connected to. There was a separate 50 pin or 68 pin connector on the scanner and if I remember correct it had a pass through 50 or 68.pin connector. I remember having to set the SCSI ID on each device. The external hard drive which weighed about 60 pounds and was 2 feet by 1 foot by 1 foot square was set to 1 and the 50 pin cable fed into that and it had a pass through and the external CD drive had the same thing and the scanner was at the end set to 3 and it needed a 50 or 68 termination block. Plugged into the feed through port to. Tell the SCSI card that was the end of the chain. It was incredible back then to have a 9 GB hard drive and it took a lot of power to run the giant motor. It sounded like a car engine and it took a minute to get up to speed and it had cooling fans that threw a lot of heat. I remember running DOS and I was so excited to get Windows 3.0 It was the first real GUI that could do anything other than look at and run the files. It had communication software that was much easier to use. Still needed to write a script to connect to the Internet, but it was better than running AOL from DOS Thinking back to those days and how much they did so little memory and storage space, they were genius. I remember seeing the first color printer and it needed 800 MB of disk space to install. And it was still terrible at printing colors. Kids today have no clue how great they have it. And I wish MS had made windows 3.0 a decade before they did. Seeing the videos of people putting Windows on a 1983 IBM, it was possible that they could have made it and run it back then. But at least we got here. I am hopeful that they will build a full A. I. that is self aware and that we can treat as a human and have help for people like me who are old and bedridden. With robotics, it would be wonderful to have a robot to help me. I saw a movie years ago about a time in the future when they have robots that help old people. Hopefully it will come soon

[@joetheman74]

The big Linux compatible scanner is cool. Would be nice to be able to scan bigger stuff. Confused about something you said regarding A4 size scanners though. You said there are not many options available that are Linux compatible. Is it because you need EXACTLY A4 size or would US Letter size which is extremely close in size to A4 also work? As for US letter size scanners that work with Linux they are like a dime a dozen. I have a generic off the shelf $50.00 Walmart 600ddpi Cannon all in one that works perfectly. And a much older 300dpi HP all in one that also works perfectly. I'm not saying they are the greatest scanners or anything but it just seems that smaller standard document size scanners that work with Linux are easy to find. Hell my Canon even has native Linux drivers though I don't bother installing them because the ones built into Linux work great already and they are a .deb package and installing them on Arch is a pain in the ass. (Though I have done it in the past.)

[@gordonwelcher9598]

If they had this for "Three days of the Condor" the movie would have lasted only 10 minutes. As long as the PDP-8 was able to keep up with the blazing speed. Never saw it, just remember it as "The Movie With The Scanner"

[@kurbads74]

I had that 4C. I think it was 6100. Just before the crisis of 2008, I managed to convince my main employer that I would not be able to continue to serve them without it. And it cost. Ls600 which was 1500 euros something. And it died. As it turns out HP (something military) had built in a death algorithm in it. And the 600 was interpolated.

[@djbongwater]

600 dpi?!?!?! for a service manual? you, sir, are doing the lords work. I scan hundreds of album covers into discogs for defacto 'archival' purposes, and 600 dpi is suitable for those, seems like crazy overkill for a technical manual but boy do i love zooming in on each individual printed dot :)

[@Matlockization]

I like what you're doing and am doing it now with maths books & lecture notes. Anyway, I had an Apple discussion with someone the other day where Apple's latest APU was almost as good as Intel & AMD, which in itself is record-breaking. But here's the problem. Their hardware price is at least 3 times that of AMD & Intel and Apple can only operate a handful of Apps & games. So my question to you is, why don't you switch to windows and get scanners that are 10 times cheaper with 10 times the image quality ?

[@DawlessHouseMusic]

haha.. my job had a scanner in 1993 and I bet it was $4000 and it was sooooooooo slow, like walk away for the hour slow and the resolution was still so bad.

[@johnnyeskimo]

Vuescan is supposed to support a lot of abandoned scanners too.

[@petekrz]

VueScan is great! I've used on MacOS and Windows for years. Supports tons of scanners. Available for Linux, but I've never used that version.

[@Bane_Amesta]

Ok using a foot pedal to hands freee scanning? This would saved me so much time when I worked in a printing shop, and was asked to scan books all day

[@trevoro.9731]

One of the major limiting factors for scanners is the interface speed. This one has only USB2.0, which makes it automatically a hugely overpriced failure.

[@ModelLights]

First, the reason they're not all like this is probably the same reason the price is high. You can bet someone had a patent on the zero edge, good idea too. Probably covered most of the time that people were scanning much of anything, early 2000's range. The black spots in the gold foil are easy to understand, it's where the reflection from the gold was more directly back to the CCD, they are the 'over white' spots. Some CCDs make true reflections all white, some all black. Think of the CCD cell as giving a value from 0 to 1000, 0 as black, 1000 as white. You start at 0 then count until you discharge the charge stored in that cell, then assign that value. Zero out the number, then start counting. But if the cell has say 1200 charge in the cell and is over ranged, you never finish counting and assign a number to that pixel, so it stays 0. It's the same reason that some CCD based cameras will make the Sun a black spot if it's in frame, the CCD cells are being over ranged and that CCD leaves them at black value. Other CCDs will result in 'maximum white' for over ranged, just depends on the way they counted.

[@zexuanqiao2441]

Many thanks for the video this is exactly what I need! A linux compatible great CCD flatbed scanner!

[@clrei8478]

The scan artifacts at 13:15 are probably due to reflection of the golden / shiny lettering. At least from what I can judge by watching it on video (as opposed to IRL). You could try to scan a mirror to verify. You can also buy configurable foot pedals to execute keybinds somewhat cheap.

[@purrator]

TBF, if documents are stapled, you should get rid of the staples ASAP anyway.

[@fsmoura]

5:36 _"So, my hands never have to touch the computer once the process is going."_ sounds like my Friday night plans ( o.o)

[@technoman9000]

Keep it to yourself, coomer

[@charleshines2142]

What I got for scanning a stack of documents was a used Canon P 215. It is not for book scanning but it does have an automatic feeder with duplex scanning. that can be used optionally. It is just a typical 600 DPI scanner but I got it used for around $50. It has so far scanned a couple reams of documents and is still working fine. This would have been at least $300 if I bought it new. It is a portable one you can take with you while you travel and can get all of the power it needs from just a USB port. Its USB port is micro B like a lot of cell phones came with for a good while after the manufacturers got their heads out of their @sses and started using things not proprietary. I say proprietary because an old flip phone I had used a special socket for charging and it was nothing that any PC or Mac ever had. It was different enough from USB that you know nothing will work with it and if you lose that charger you may as well throw the phone away. I am glad they do not use proprietary things like that any more with the exception being Apple. I am glad the EU told them to stop. The last thing we need are more weird connectors that do not work with anything except one specific device.

[@TwentyEightySeven]

Wish my local library was so well equipped, loads of stuff I’d love to digitalise with a decent commercial scanner or document feeder. My old consumer grade A4 scanner at home just won’t cut it.

[@HelloKittyFanMan]

"...So they can be shared." * ...more easily than with other methods like shipping physical copies, etc.

[@edgarwalk5637]

To me, the ultimate scanner would use a camera system combined with lidar (or sonar) account for the curvature of the page. The lidar could be used to unwarp the page via software. Note: I'm not saying it's necessarily a viable product.

[@herzogsbuick]

since xsane increments scanned files you could grep for files that end in an even or odd number then process them that way automatically

[@Subgunman]

Personally I own a Canon flatbed scanner that can also scan film in both 35mm and medium format 120 film used in most Hasselblad cameras. It can also do 35mm slides with the adapters that came with it. It is CF lamp based but I wish I knew the kelvin temperature of the lamp just in case it fails. There are sources for the lamps from what I have seen but they only give dimensions and color temperature. Most of these lamps operate at the same voltage so the power supply within the scanner hopefully would be universal.

[@nomadhgnis9425]

fujitsu fi-5750 series makes the best adf scanners. They are extremely fast at 600dpi. These scanners are also strong and last years. They also have service kits.

[@technicalfool]

Wondering how long it'll be before the "best" workflow will just be nice even lighting, a good camera, take a photo of both pages at once and let AI or some kind of auto-image-mangling figure the rest out.

[@HelloKittyFanMan]

"...The difference between a flatbed and documents"? That doesn't make sense. You can't scan documents with a flatbed scanner?

[@MeriaDuck]

At first I thought the translation mangled your pronunciation of manual, but I really hear mangle. Let me borrow that I guess deliberate mispronunciation 😂

[@DandyDon1]

3K? I purchased a low mileage Kyocera 4003i $3999 which was a repo. Prior I had tried the Plustek A320L and sent it back. Could not get the colors balance setup correctly. My slow high detail "when I have a lot of time" is Epson v750 Pro. Unfortunately it does not scan anything larger than about 8.5" by 11.5".

[@DandyDon1]

With a very clean ADF, if the document you are scanning has slightly curled paged, or is decades old, you'll have problems with slightly skewed pages, and high dust accumulation within the paper path and rollers. An additional item for a flatbed scanner is to have a ColorMunki unit to make sure the colors you see on your monitor match the scanner. Especially as your monitor and the scanner's lamp ages.

[@jnharton]

FWIW, it might be possible to do some sort of binary patch on the drivers to work with a different set of USB hardware IDs as long as everything else is the same.

[@tootalldan5702]

Cool and honest review. I looked up avision fb25 which was incredible fast scan times at 1200dpi looked promising but like you said "you can't find them"

[@JeanTheron-cf8zl]

As a representative of the African distributor of Avision, I find that pretty sad, because the FB25 is an amazing unit to watch in action. Where are you based?

[@tootalldan5702]

@@JeanTheron-cf8zl US

[@JeanTheron-cf8zl]

Did a bit of digging. Xerox used to sell rebranded Avision units in the USA (and possibly Canada?). Xerox currently rebrands Visioneer devices, which are themselves rebranded Avision products. The model number for the FB25 equivalent is the Visioneer 7900. Can't vouch for its compatibility with SANE or Mac OS, though. If you have your heart set on an original FB25, your best option would be to import it from one of Avision's other markets, like Europe or Africa.

[@corkbulb2895]

I absolutely love how so many people have the need to copy, backup, archive and upload to the interwebs every single document ever written known to man and every piece of random software ever written.

[@indevelopment3453]

scanning is my boring task, a USB foot pedal would be so helpful, can't believe i've never seen one until now

[@zaxxon4]

While I've never seen a scanner that puts black behind the page, but I started using black plastic file folders behind the page back in the 90s.

[@LaskyLabs]

I've been needing a book edge scanner for an old game guide. Ah well...

[@HelloKittyFanMan]

Haha, "mine's bulb"? * "My scanner's bulb..."