User:Woozle/HP 4370

Computing: Hardware: HP ScanJet 4370: Woozle review

Introduction

I purchased the unit on 2006-02-14 to replace Harena's old AcerScan 620UT, which is still working as I write but which had developed some annoying streaks in the scanned image, making it unsuitable for high-quality scanning of photographs.

Delivery

I ordered from Newegg, which seemed to have the best price by about $5 (I had considered getting it from a local Office Depot, OfficeMax, or Best Buy, but where the model was available in general it was never in stock in my local store); they delivered it in 2 days (which is apparently an internal goal of NewEgg's, though not a guarantee). The box seemed somewhat battered on the outside (photo available; will upload when I have time) and rattled a bit, but there was no evidence of damage to the scanner. It was in fact the scanner doing most of the rattling, which leads me to wonder if something was supposed to be clamped down – but the instructions show no evidence of any shipping restraints to remove.

Hookup

There was an awkward pause when I noticed that the scanner's power adapter is a three-prong wall wart, which meant that I didn't have any free sockets into which it could be inserted. One plug-bar later (my count is now four plug bars), I had it powered up and hooked to a USB cable.

Software

While I could use this scanner with Windows if I had to, I would much rather get it working with Linux. The good news is that Linux did detect it, and sane-find-scanner returned the following:

found USB scanner (vendor=0x03f0 [hewlett packard], product=0x4105 [hp scanjet]) at libusb:001:003
  # Your USB scanner was (probably) detected. It may or may not be supported by
  # SANE. Try scanimage -L and read the backend's manpage.

The bad news is that scanimage -L returned this:

No scanners were identified. If you were expecting something different,
check that the scanner is plugged in, turned on and detected by the
sane-find-scanner tool (if appropriate). Please read the documentation
which came with this software (README, FAQ, manpages).

The SANE web site confirms that the 4370 is not yet supported. However, it looks like there is a 3rd-party driver in development which apparently works (and which will eventually be included with SANE when it is ready), so I downloaded that and installed it.

Linux Driver

The driver archive (which downloads as a .tar.gz file) contained a README file (actually, two – one in English and one in Spanish) with detailed installation instructions. Here are the steps, summarized, with my results.

1. Find out where the SANE library files are installed by typing "locate sane|grep libsane-dll.so". I got this:

/usr/lib/sane/libsane-dll.so.1
/usr/lib/sane/libsane-dll.so.1.0.15

2. Copy these files into the located path:

• libsane-hp3900.la
• libsane-hp3900.so.1.0.17

The command "cp lib/* /usr/local/lib/sane/" is given as a way of doing this, but it assumes you have unzipped the .tar.gz file and have chdired to the root of the unzipped folder tree. I used konqueror to do the copying without actually unzipping the archive (had to load konqueror in root mode, though, in order to write to /usr/lib/sane/).

3. Create the following symbolic links (the following commands use my directory structure):

cd /usr/lib/sane
ln -s /usr/lib/sane/libsane-hp3900.so.1.0.17 libsane-hp3900.so
ln -s /usr/lib/sane/libsane-hp3900.so.1.0.17 libsane-hp3900.so.1

4. Now we have to inform SANE that a new backend is installed. To do that, we need to edit the dll.conf file; to do that, we need to find out where that file is located, which can be done by typing "locate dll.conf". I got the following results:

/etc/sane.d/dll.conf
/usr/share/dotnet/mono/gac/Mono.Data.SqliteClient/1.0.5000.0__0738eb9f132ed756/Mono.Data.SqliteClient.dll.config
/usr/share/dotnet/mono/gac/monodoc/1.0.0.0__0738eb9f132ed756/monodoc.dll.config
/usr/share/dotnet/mono/gac/glib-sharp/1.0.0.0__35e10195dab3c99f/glib-sharp.dll.config
/usr/share/dotnet/mono/gac/gtk-sharp/1.0.0.0__35e10195dab3c99f/gtk-sharp.dll.config
/usr/share/dotnet/mono/gac/gdk-sharp/1.0.0.0__35e10195dab3c99f/gdk-sharp.dll.config
/usr/share/dotnet/mono/gac/atk-sharp/1.0.0.0__35e10195dab3c99f/atk-sharp.dll.config
/usr/share/dotnet/mono/gac/pango-sharp/1.0.0.0__35e10195dab3c99f/pango-sharp.dll.config
/usr/share/dotnet/mono/gac/gconf-sharp/1.0.0.0__35e10195dab3c99f/gconf-sharp.dll.config
/usr/share/dotnet/mono/gac/gecko-sharp/1.0.0.0__ccf7d78a55e9f021/gecko-sharp.dll.config
/usr/share/dotnet/mono/gac/glade-sharp/1.0.0.0__35e10195dab3c99f/glade-sharp.dll.config
/usr/share/dotnet/mono/gac/gnome-sharp/1.0.0.0__35e10195dab3c99f/gnome-sharp.dll.config
/usr/share/dotnet/mono/gac/art-sharp/1.0.0.0__35e10195dab3c99f/art-sharp.dll.config
/usr/share/dotnet/mono/gac/gtkhtml-sharp/1.0.0.0__35e10195dab3c99f/gtkhtml-sharp.dll.config
/usr/share/dotnet/mono/gac/gda-sharp/1.0.0.0__35e10195dab3c99f/gda-sharp.dll.config
/usr/share/dotnet/mono/gac/gnomedb-sharp/1.0.0.0__35e10195dab3c99f/gnomedb-sharp.dll.config
/usr/share/dotnet/mono/gac/rsvg-sharp/1.0.0.0__35e10195dab3c99f/rsvg-sharp.dll.config
/usr/share/dotnet/mono/gac/gtksourceview-sharp/1.0.0.1__35e10195dab3c99f/gtksourceview-sharp.dll.config
/usr/lib/monodevelop/bin/gdl-sharp.dll.config
/usr/lib/monodevelop/bin/MonoDevelop.Gui.Utils.dll.config
/usr/lib/monodevelop/bin/MonoDevelop.Base.dll.config
/usr/lib/monodevelop/bin/MonoDevelop.SourceEditor.dll.config

The first line (/etc/sane.d/dll.conf) would seem to be the one we're looking for, but if it's not as obvious in the results you get you can apply grep as was done earlier: "locate dll.conf|grep sane"

"/usr/local/etc/sane.d/" is apparently the default location, although "/etc/sane.d/" is also common.

5.Edit dll.conf and append the following line:

hp3900

(The instructions note that lines beginning with "#" are comments, effectively disabling whatever driver is named on that line, so don't put a "#" before the "hp3900".) The drivers in my dll.conf were more or less sorted alphabetically, so I added "hp3900" right above "hp5400".

6. Copy conf/hp3900.conf (from the downloaded driver files) into the same folder as dll.conf (e.g. in my case, put it at /etc/sane.d/hp3900.conf).

After doing that, I ran "scanimage -L" again and this time got this:

device `hp3900:libusb:001:003' is a Hewlett-Packard HP39xx Flatbed Scanner flatbed scanner

Then I went back into GIMP File -> Acquire -> XSane -> Device Dialog..., which previously had reported "no scanner detected", and it happily loaded XSane and allowed me to do a preview – which came up all black, regardless of what was on the scan surface. Just as a test, I did a scan, and it came up all yellow with regular horizontal dashes down one side.

So either the driver isn't quite happy, or else the scanner itself is borken somehow. I guess I'll have to install it on Windows to find out if it's the software.

2006-02-19 update: Apparently the developer is aware of the problem and is obtaining the data needed in order to fix it. :-)

Windows Software

While waiting for the Linux driver to be updated, I went ahead and installed the Windows driver and software on my Win98 box. Although the scanner interface front-end was usable, there were a few minor annoyances... Sometimes when you load the front-end, it goes ahead and does a preview; other times, it shows a little "getting ready to scan" icon, which I assume means I have to wait – but in fact, nothing happens unless you press the "New Scan" (which most front-ends label as "Preview") button. (Also, the button which most front-ends label "Scan" is called "Accept".) The resolution always defaults back to the resolution set somewhere else (probably Image Zone Express; see below).

The setup program also installed "HP Image Zone Express", after reporting that it had reviewed my system configuration and determined that it didn't want to install the full-blown "HP Image Zone" (probably only available for WinXP or better). I haven't tried this software yet, since I usually use Microsoft Photo Editor and Jasc PaintShop Pro 8 for image editing.