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Getting Microtek Scanmaker E6 to work

Bill-kun

Bill-kun

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Nov 2, 2020
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Michigan
Our first scanner, a Microtek Scanmaker E6 from circa 1996, still appears to work fine, but I can’t get the software to see it. Windows XP says a camera is newly connected, but can’t automatically find a driver for it.

The scanner has on its rear a SCSI port, DB25 port, and a DB15 port. I am connecting to the SCSI port, converting to parallel, and plugging it into the parallel port of the AMD Athlon 2100 MHz. with Windows XP.

I have tried 3 different pieces of OEM software. They ask how it is connected and I say parallel port. They all say there is no scanner connected.
 
Bill-kun said:
The scanner has on its rear a SCSI port, DB25 port, and a DB15 port. I am connecting to the SCSI port, converting to parallel, and plugging it into the parallel port of the AMD Athlon 2100 MHz. with Windows XP.
Click to expand...

I am wincing already here. How exactly did you "convert SCSI to parallel"? Did you just plug a DB-25 to Centronics 50 pin cable between the parallel port and the Scanner's SCSI port, or do you have a parallel port to SCSI controller dongle (with suitable drivers) in between the two devices?

Old Macintosh computers used a female DB-25 connector for external SCSI peripherals that's physically identical to a PC parallel port, so DB-25 to SCSI *cables*, IE, just dumb cables, are very common. But if you hook a SCSI device up to a PC parallel port with one you could very well damage the SCSI device, the PC, or both. It definitely will not *work*.
 
I'm wondering if this is some sort of attempt at humor, that is just somehow missing the mark. Wasn't it a just a few days ago you tried to use a parallel port as a serial port? Now you're trying to use a parallel port as a SCSI port?

In case you are serious, a parallel port isn't a "universal" port that you can use for any other purpose. Physical "adapters" are almost exclusively for conversions between the same type of port. For example if you have a 50 pin SCSI and you want to convert to DB25 SCSI, that should be possible. If you have a DB25 serial and you want to convert to DE9, that will probably work. If you have a mouse that works with serial or PS/2, then a serial to ps/2 or vice-versa might work, but only if the mouse supports it. Same for USB to whatever adapters, they only work if the device specifically supports it, unless they are special active adapters like a USB to serial or USB to ps/2 mouse and keyboard that you used to see a lot in the early 2000s when things were first switching to USB only on consumer gear.

It's best to not plug anything into a port or device unless you are sure it's correct. Just because you connected an adapter and it fits doesn't mean you won't damage something, as in the example from Eudimorphodon.

There are some exceptions (like a handful of zip drives that are parallel and scsi compatible), but it's best to assume that what you are working with isn't an exception and don't just plug it in without finding out first.
 
jafir said:
There are some exceptions (like a handful of zip drives that are parallel and scsi compatible), but it's best to assume that what you are working with isn't an exception and don't just plug it in without finding out first.
Click to expand...

There are horror stories of people melting the SCSI ports in their Macs after erroneously connecting parallel-only ZIP drives to them so the danger of just plug-and-trying it isn't just theoretical. DB-25 is possibly the most overused and abused connector in computing history; if you're staring down one of those ports on a random piece of vintage computer gear you can make *zero* assumptions about either pinout or protocol, and just plug-and-trying is a really dumb idea.

But, yeah, frankly I am almost feeling like this is a troll. USB was a significant milestone in mainstream computing specifically because the "U" stands for "Universal" and the whole idea was to free us from the tyranny of having to have a million different interfaces in our computer to talk to different kinds of devices. You don't exactly need to be a white-haired professor of computer science to grasp this concept, and it's not unreasonable to expect anyone collecting "vintage" computers to need to wrap their heads around it.
 
It is not an attempt at humor and not trolling. I used vintage computers in their first run; only used them; not bought them, set them up, installed new hardware, or reconfigured them. So even though I installed DOS games and wrote intermediate GWBASIC programs and simple batch files, I had no idea how the computers really work(ed) until a couple years ago when I became interested. I am learning this as I go, and although I am a very technical person, there is a steep learning curve for this--the kind where a learner often doesn't even know what the right question to ask is. Of course USB was a major milestone that freed us from having to manually configure all this stuff. That is now; this was then. In that sense I'm even having to reverse my thinking during my learning. (Yoda: "You must unlearn what you have learned.")

The scanner in question has had this converter and this cable connected to it since it was disconnected from normal use far over a decade ago. This looks to me like a SCSI connector that then goes through some adaptor and goes through the big white cable. The opposite end of this cable is a male DB25, and I have every reason to believe that went into the parallel port.
Microtek scanner front - Screenshot 2021-10-28 052108.jpgMicrotek scanner rear - Screenshot 2021-10-28 052018.jpg

In my experience and as far as I know, dongles and even the word "dongle" weren't invented until about 2004, and that word had never been applied to anything that is not USB and does not connect to anything else. I certainly could be wrong on that, but that is my experience.
 
The opposite end of this cable is a male DB25, and I have every reason to believe that went into the parallel port.
Click to expand...
I could give you the same answer as last time, but I guess you are not really interested in doing any reseach on your own before trying such things.

SCSI had DB25 as well. This is SCSI, not parallel. And unlike with your mouse experiment, you killed either your parallel port or the SCSI part of the scanner already if you connected it like this.

To make this clear again, even if many told you already: using adapters to make something fit will *not* make it magically work! There are reasons why connectors are different. Adapters only adapt the connector, not the protocol, voltage levels, etc. Stop doing this.
 
Bill-kun said:
The scanner in question has had this converter and this cable connected to it since it was disconnected from normal use far over a decade ago. This looks to me like a SCSI connector that then goes through some adaptor and goes through the big white cable. The opposite end of this cable is a male DB25, and I have every reason to believe that went into the parallel port.
Click to expand...

That "adapter" it's going through looks to me like a SCSI terminator. In which case it's just a passive device meant to improve signal integrity between the host controller and the last device on a SCSI chain. (SCSI is complicated.) In which case, no, it is not a protocol converter. At all. An active parallel to SCSI adapter is going to say what it is, and in most cases will have a passthrough port marked "printer" so you can have both it and the SCSI device hooked up at the same time. (There are limited exceptions to that second rule, like the Jazz Traveller. Which was never intended as a general purpose device.)

Unless Windows tells you you have a SCSI adapter attached (because that's what your scanner is still going to look like if you were hooked up via such an adapter, you're going to rely on the driver for *that* to do the communication to the scanner itself) you just cross-connected two completely incompatible things.

In my experience and as far as I know, dongles and even the word "dongle" weren't invented until about 2004
Click to expand...

The exact origins of the term are sort of obscure but it was in circulation by the late 1980's. Back then it mostly applied to nasty little dingus-es that attached to a serial or parallel port that were intended to enforce software copy protection, but by the early 1990's it started applying generally to adapter cables/PCMCIA card pigtails/etc.
 
... FWIW, I had the baby brother of this exact scanner back in the late 1990s. (A ScanMaker E3 instead of an E6.) The brain-dead little SCSI card it came with had the Mac-style 25 pin port on it (IE, same as a parallel port) and I'm also pretty sure it came with exactly that same cable and terminator plug.
 
According to an in-box listing of this E6 model I found, it came from the factory with a SCSI card. So that SCSI card must have had the mating female DB25 port on it. I don’t know if we still have that card. I can look for it. Anyway, I will also try to hook up a printer or something else to make sure the parallel port is still fine. The scanner was only plugged in for 10 minutes.
 
Bill-kun said:
Our first scanner, a Microtek Scanmaker E6 from circa 1996, still appears to work fine, but I can’t get the software to see it. Windows XP says a camera is newly connected, but can’t automatically find a driver for it.

The scanner has on its rear a SCSI port, DB25 port, and a DB15 port. I am connecting to the SCSI port, converting to parallel, and plugging it into the parallel port of the AMD Athlon 2100 MHz. with Windows XP.
Click to expand...

Microtek made a SCSI to parallel dongle and that might have been included with your scanner. I got one with my V300 but never used it as I was scanning via Macs which have SCSI built-in.
From memory the dongle is quite chunky, the size of a cigarette packet, and the parallel cable is not removable.
That doesn't look to be what you have got hooked up in the photo though. If you were definitely scanning on a PC that didn't have an internal SCSI card then you might need to look around from the Mikrotek converter. Hope that helps a bit.
 
What are you using to convert to parallel? You did know that earlier SCSI cards (I have several) employed the "Apple SCSI" connection using DB25 connectors? I have one such cable that converts from DB25 "Apple SCSI" to 50-conductor Blue-ribbon SCSI. Just different connections on either end--no active devices. It looks like this
 
Chuck(G) said:
What are you using to convert to parallel? You did know that earlier SCSI cards (I have several) employed the "Apple SCSI" connection using DB25 connectors? I have one such cable that converts from DB25 "Apple SCSI" to 50-conductor Blue-ribbon SCSI. Just different connections on either end--no active devices. It looks like this
Click to expand...

Yes, I think we covered that
 
Also, I found that the DB25 port is for daisy-chain SCSI and the DB15 port is for other accessories, so I can't use them to do the scan data transfer. This is strictly a SCSI device. I did find the complete manual PDF somewhere online and I don't think it mentioned either of those ports. But this site did:

https://www.scantips.com/mtek.html#20 said:
Microtek rear panel documentation

Curious about your rear panel connectors? On the SCSI scanners, the 25 pin connector on the rear panel is for connecting another external SCSI device. You could use the furnished SCSI cable to do that if it is available.

The 15 pin connector is for accessories like the TMA and ADF options (Transparent Media Adapter and Automatic Document Feeder).

The parallel interface models vary. On some this is a SCSI connector for other SCSI devices, but on most, this is a parallel connector for a printer. Be sure you realize you cannot connect a printer to a SCSI port.
Click to expand...

Link to the manual PDF (May 1996; covers Microtek E3, E6, III, IIHR, IISP/IISPX, II/IIXE, IIG, 35t Plus, 45t):
https://data2.manualslib.com/pdf7/1...aker_iig.pdf?8cf32467401421273439d741a32c5c10
 
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Yep, I've got a (UMAX) scanner like that and it uses a DB25F for SCSI. Said connector is clearly marked. Even if it weren't, there's a small (screwdriver-operated) SCSI ID switch which is a dead giveaway. The good news is that SANE now supports most SCSI scanners.
 
Another question since it occured to me.

I found in my shelves a Dynex model DX-UBPC cable. It has 36-pin Centronix on one end and male USB on the other. The Dynex website says this is for converting parallel to USB. Obviously this is incorrect for this application, but it got me thinking.

Is there a similar simple SCSI-to-USB adaptor that is purchasable? Maybe this?

Ratoc USB 2.0 to Ultra SCSI Converter
https://www.synchrotech.com/product-usb/usb2-uscsi-conv_01.html
 
If you haven't damaged the scanner from plugging it into the parallel port then, yes, USB SCSI adapters were a thing for a while and will probably work fine, as long as it has drivers for your OS and isn't specifically only for use with, say, mass storage devices. If the machine you have has PCI slots I'd *guess* you could probably get a PCI SCSI controller cheaper, but I say this completely having not checked...

Okay, I checked. Yes, unless I searched incorrectly the prices for SCSI->USB adapters are completely insane on eBay right now, while you can get a new-in-box Adaptec 2940 for $25 shipped BIN.

As I recall my E3 came with a cereal-box quality ISA controller. A lot like this one. In fact, maybe exactly this one. Not that ISA does you much good anymore. (Although, really, conventional PCI isn't much better, is it. PCIe SCSI controllers are pretty rare, and most of the few that exist are not appropriate for either consumer-grade PCs nor for driving a scanner.))

Be aware that if you get a PCI SCSI controller it'll probably have an HD-50 connector on the back, not DB-25. So you'll also need a new cable.
 
Domex PCI and ISA SCSI controllers were commonly shipped with scanners of this vintage. ROM-less with 25-pin external connectors. Example. Not speed demons, but adequate for scanner use; no boot ROM. Still plenty on eBay, cheap.
 
Okay, after talking about it with my brother, he showed me the DB25 port on the SCSI card that has been installed in the computer in question the whole time (AMD Athlon 2100 MHz.). I plugged it into there. I think I got the scanner to do a preview scan, but I got really confused about what software to use out of the more than 3 different ones I had installed to try to get at least one of them working. Since I had finally gotten a response from the scanner, I decided to uninstall all of them and install the one that sounds best. And then WinXP said it couldn't find a certain file needed to remove two of the programs, so now I have to research how to manually remove programs from installation in WinXP, as well as manually deleting the files. Then I will get back to it. Ulead PhotoImpact I now remember is the scanning program we used to use. I'll try to find that specific one.
 
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