Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

l'ignorante · Feb 19, 2002, 09:46 AM

Hi
I have this old HP scanner I bought in 1995, does everything I want it to... cost me 1000$, so it should.
Now I use an iMac at a friends place and I want to hook up my old scanner.
The software came on a discette, and is probably not even OS9 compatible. I can't find out because as you know the iMac does not take discettes..then there is the serial port versus USB thing etc etc etc
Do I really have to buy a new scanner, or is there a cheap solution.
When I get home I'll check the model of the scanner which you probably need to know but I forgot (shame :o )

ChaChi Boy · Feb 19, 2002, 10:01 AM

I'm sure you can get a better scanner now for $100.

l'ignorante · Feb 19, 2002, 12:58 PM

Originally posted by ChaChi Boy:
<STRONG>I'm sure you can get a better scanner now for $100.</STRONG>

Sure ?
I heard some bad stories about, for instance, Agfa snapscan. My HP still delivers pro-quality.

ChaChi Boy · Feb 19, 2002, 02:18 PM

Me and 5 of my friends have the SnapScan 1212. It puts out. Awesome scanner (and one of the few with OSX drivers).

I used an HP daily 4 years ago and I thought it stunk.

andi*pandi · Feb 20, 2002, 12:25 PM

You can get a serial-usb adapter for like 50 bucks, I think.

as for the drivers on the floppies... if you still have a comp that has floppy, you can a) copy em to a cd, zip, email, etc or b) download new ones from HP.

There is a good chance that the the drivers won't work with OS9, but it's worth a chance. Some of my old things that worked in 8.6 still work, but some didn't pass the upgrade. Tossup.

Depends on how good the scanner really is, whether you take chachi's advice and buy new, or pay for connector for the old. If you have other old serial devices it may be worth it to have an adapter.

(Is this the scanner you're using to get your photos for the book you mentioned in the art fora? If it's being professionally printed, you may want to have the printer do color-correction on your scans. I would have mentioned it over there but assumed you had pro scanning.)

Tristrami · Feb 21, 2002, 09:18 AM

I use an old Apple ColorOne SCSI scanner with the powermac 6500 in the asement- still works great!

PeteWK · Feb 21, 2002, 04:06 PM

Originally posted by l'ignorante:
<STRONG>Hi
I have this old HP scanner I bought in 1995, does everything I want it to... cost me 1000$, so it should.
Now I use an iMac at a friends place and I want to hook up my old scanner.
The software came on a discette, and is probably not even OS9 compatible. I can't find out because as you know the iMac does not take discettes..then there is the serial port versus USB thing etc etc etc
Do I really have to buy a new scanner, or is there a cheap solution.
When I get home I'll check the model of the scanner which you probably need to know but I forgot (shame :o )</STRONG>

I know what you mean. Those old HP scanners were the thing to have back in the day. There are some good scanners for around 300 bucks now. If you want to keep your old one going, there is some good advise here on this thread. If you want to upgrade, stick with the HPs. They're just bullet proof and their software is excellent. I have a 5300 series that rocks (just one year old, though).

PeteWK

l'ignorante · Feb 22, 2002, 05:11 AM

Sorry for the late reply, been out of town for some time. The scanner is a HP scanjet 4C.
Thanks for all the advise. I'm going to try if it's possible to download the driver and find out if it still works on OS9. If that's the case I'll get the adapter.
It's possibly easier and not much more expensive to buy a new scanner, but I just can't dump a good working, never failing product just like that.
thanks