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[29/8] Did I say a bit of feature creep? I just added support for the FB620P and possibly the 320P (although I don't have one of those to test). If you have one of those scanners, now is the time to check out the latest CVS and give it a go! Please provide me with feedback so I know if it works. -MD

[8/8] Anyone read this stuff? If so, you'll be happy to know I haven't forgotten about making a new version, it just suffered a bit of feature creep. I also got a bit distracted trying to sqeeze every last ounce of performance out of it. This is a good thing in one way, it's now nicer to use, looks slightly less prototype now and slightly more useful. Check out the latest CVS if you're really keen, or wait for me to be happy with it and make a release in the next week or so. -MD

[26/7] I spent some of my holidays porting libieee1284 to Solaris/x86, OpenBSD, and Cygwin. With any luck these ports will be available in the next release of libieee1284. Since I used this driver as the test program for each platform, I'm confident that it will work in these new environments. If you're still having trouble with the driver, this process also let me find a few small problems which weren't occuring on my system but may have been for other people. Stay tuned for a new version with these fixes soon. -MD

[29/6] I've released a new version of the stand-alone driver which fixes some problems with ppdev access.. one of them my fault, one of them not. Try it out if you've been having trouble with ppdev. The changes have also gone into SANE CVS. Also, Luis F. Cisneros was kind enough write a HowTo for installing the SANE driver in both English and espaņol. These assume many "default" options, and you will find these particularly useful if you're new to compiling your own things.

[20/6] Thanks to Hans Jeuken for sending in this PERL-tk script. It provides a nice interface for the stand-alone scan utility. This is particularly good if you're having some problems getting SANE to work on your system. I haven't been able to get it to work myself but I'm not exactly Mr. PERL. There are some variables at the top that you need to change before using it. Thanks, Hans. Sorry it took me a month to post it; I am a slacker. -SK

[3/4] No news doesn't mean no activity.. I'm pleased to announce that the SANE backend part of the driver has just been included in SANE CVS. That means that the next release of SANE (1.0.8) will include our backend, so no more playing with patches. Even if we make updates from now on, it won't require nearly so much patching to get SANE working. I'll be posting a patch for 1.0.7 with all our latest changes in the next few days, keep an eye on the releases page. -MD

[13/2] There were a couple of bugs regarding the calibration file in version 3.99 which a lot of you have tried - there is a new release on the sourceforge releases page which should fix these problems. - MD

[7/1] Some libieee1284 bugs were fixed recently, so anyone feeling adventurous might want to try the latest code: just use [this tarball of the scan package] and [this tarball of libieee1284] together. There are some weird things going wrong with it on my machines, so if possible use PPDEV in your kernel and ECP mode should be auto-detected. Nibble-mode is flaky but seems to work on machines without PPDEV. ECP mode is not supported for non-PPDEV kernels. If you get a lot of errors such as "Data read error: -1" or "!! Unknown status - 0000" when using nibble-mode, don't bother to email us - we know about it. If this works badly for you just stick with the old stuff for now. -SK

[6/12] Sane 1.0.6 Patch is up on the sourceforge site. Scan and be merry! But be careful about which version of libieee1284 you use. The new 0.1.2 release will not work as it is a new API revision. -MD + SK

[6/10] We're not dead.. work has been done on the driver in the last few weeks, and you can expect an updated SANE patch once I finish exams. If you're having trouble getting the driver to work, you're not alone. Here are some things to try:

-MD

[15/8] Two things. The backend is all but working and grouse n that. Get it from the downloads page as ever. In other news, Kevin has very usefully packaged libieee1284 for Debian as [lib] and [dev] packages. Enjoy! -MD

[10/8] Two new developments: Matt's SANE backend is finished and ready. It is almost complete, I need to fix up cancelling before it'll be really cooked. the other thing is ECP-mode support for the driver. Hooray, libieee1284! Get the code from the usual place above. - SK

[22/7] Someone opened up their scanner and took some photos of the PCB. No LM9830 in sight I'm afraid. The bad thing is that it seems to be made up mainly of custom ICs. That doesn't change the fact that our driver works, o' course. Sorry, fb630u developers. Our code won't be much use to you. -SK

[20/7] SANE Backend and FB340/FB640Ps: Two things.. the SANE backend is roxing along at a goodly rate - it currently produces output.. albeit poorly. Should have something tangible within a week or two. On another note, we have received reports that the FB640P works perfectly with the drivers. This was a happy coincidence, but we're not complaining. -MD

[16/7] New code, here you go, get libieee1284, compile this, use it, it's grouse an' all. Honest, if you don't believe me compare images scanned with the old driver with images scanned using this new one. Those pictures have the gamma WAY UP to show the corruption in the very very black parts of the image that you can't even see. That's a result of both scanning in 10 bits and doing gain offsets in 10 bits. Makes a hell of a difference. -SK