Printing and Scanning on the OS/2 Platform by Tony Butka

For some time I have had a lot of requests for a cheap scanner and driver combination for OS/2. You know, all the members that lurk around Fry's and Micro Centre. Well, it's here., a neat scanner/Twain driver bundle for OS/2. Solution Technology (www.stiscan.com) has announced a package for $169.95. That's right, less than $200 with shipping for a scanner and a native OS/2 scanning program called Applause, including the Twain drivers. The only catch is that right now the bundle can only be shipped to North America.

STI can do this because they made a deal with Epson to buy up older (read replaced by newer stuff) Epson ES-1000C color scanners.

Details on the scanner from Epson Tech Support (thanks folks!) are that it's a flatbed line scanner, honest 400 dpi (400x800) rgb, 8 bit (10 bits per pixel converted). In color mode the scanner is 3 pass, 1 pass for b&w. It has 7 brightness levels, and will work with SCSI and bidirectional parallel connections. (Note - save yourself some pain and get a SCSI card). Although I don't have a price, an automatic document feeder and transparency unit are available for the scanner as well. Kudos to all.

Speaking of Epson, if I haven't mentioned it before, IBM has new OMNI drivers for the Epson series through the device driver pak site, and a couple of readers have spoken very highly of them. I've personally just downloaded the drivers (file size is a little under 2.5 megs) and so far they look good:

Some readers reported problems with the Lotus SmartSuite and printers like the Epsons. If the new OMNI drivers don't do the trick, try the cheap update to Release 1.1 available through Lotus. It contains some newer drivers, Y2K stuff, and supposedly better filters to work with Office 97. Call Lotus at 1-800-343-5414. Make sure that you tell them you are a registered user and want the update, not the upgrade. The update is about $15, the upgrade is more like $150, as in competitive upgrade. This one is (unfortunately) thanks to a user who got bit.

Switching gears, we also have a number of users who have various HP scanners, and have used them with the CFM, STI, and even SANE drivers. I don't know how many remember, but there was a cool combo of Danmar drivers and Copyshop/2 for OS2. When the US distributer went back to Australia, they seemed to disappear. Well they are back:

This was a very popular combination that handles hi-res (up to 600 dpi if the scanner will handle it), works seamlessly with PCL print drivers, can reduce/enlarge, and handles all the popular file formats with its built in file/image viewer. You can copy to a fax as well. Finally, if you have an automatic document feeder (ADF) the program will let you scan/save a bunch of pages automatically. The program works with the HP Scanjet, SJ+, II series, 3c, 3p, 4c, 4p, 5p, and 6100c. It'll print to any printer with OS/2 drivers, fastest to PCL5 or 6.

Best of all, a bundle of the Copyshop program and Danmar SCSI drivers is available for $69, a very nice price. Congratulations to Trafalger For those of you out there with HP scanners and printers, say a Laser 4, this is a great solution.

Finally, a couple of notes on print driver problems. Thanks to reader Jim Heifetz for pointing out that even when you delete a printer file, there is a lot of stuff left behind in the INI files. The suggestion is, delete the drivers, run an INI editor like Gammatech or Graham to delete all printer entries, use checkini to make sure the deletions 'took,' and then reboot. Now you can install the drivers you want. You can also turn off the print spooler to see if it is the problem. See you next month.

By day, Tony Butka is a bureaucrat for Los Angeles County. In his other life he lives in a loft surrounded by computers, printers, and a host of vinyl records.

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