[collinong]

Ed Hamrick, the author of VueScan, needs help in providing USB support in the software. VueScan is a very useful scanning utility which most users of film scanners use to get the most out of their scanners. The recently released Minolta Scan Dual II has a USB interface only and is a price-performance leader and would be ideal for iMac/Cube/G4 users. However, the Minolta software is rather inefficient for scanning lots of pictures, an area that VueScan excels at.
www.hamrick.com

Specifically, what Ed needs:

- a way of reading and writing arbitrary bulk data endpoints on an arbitrary usb scanner. I need to be able to read from the bulk data input, write to bulk data output, and read from the interrupt endpoint.

- a way to detect the VID/PID of an arbitrary usb scanner

He has already extensively researched this via Apple's USB documentation on the web, but without success.

Can anybody provide pointers to source code examples for the above functions?

Also, if you can suggest a better place to ask this, please let me know. I am just a user of the software that wants it to work on the Mac.

[This message has been edited by collinong (edited 11-29-2000).]

[Paul Crawford]

Hi,

I guess that Ed could try the various other resources for nitty-gritty USB programming on Apple's Hardware USB Developer page, if he hasn't already exhausted all of them. In addition to the downloadable USB Driver Development Kit (DDK) itself, there are some useful links at the top left (and repeated near the bottom) of the page.

One such link is to a 'Getting Started' page, which contains its own links to an older version of the 'USB API Reference Guide' (Rev. 24) and some additional DDK sample code, as well as instructions on how to join Apple's dedicated 'Mac OS USB Developers' mailing list, etc. There's also a newer version of the USB API Reference (Rev. 26), which Ed may have already seen. If the USB API Reference doesn't provide the details that he needs about USB device descriptors (Vendor ID, Product ID, etc.), and USB pipe I/O (bulk, interrupt, etc.), then hopefully the USB DDK's sample code would shed further light.

[BTW, the general Apple Mailing Lists site also carries instructions on how to join several Apple and non-Apple mailing lists, including the same Mac OS USB Developers mailing list described on the 'Getting Started' page mentioned above.]

We all wish you and Ed much success and, for Ed, "happy programming". :-)

Regards,

--Paul

[This message has been edited by Paul Crawford (edited 11-29-2000).]

If I were Ed, I would contact Alessandro Levi Montalcini. He wrote USB Overdrive, and I believe he still works as a freelance programmer.

alm@montalcini.com www.montalcini.com