Hello all,

I bought a blue & White G3 Mac 300 and upgraded it to 192 MB and installed the OrangeMicro Grappler 906F SCSI card.

To this I conected a new Epson Perfection 636 scanner, a zip, 3 external SCSI drives and a Panasonic CD-R..

The drives and the scanner were immediately recognized by the G3 and they all work perfectly EXCEPT the Epson Perfection - that is - the scanner works with one of the 2 Twain drivers supplied with the scanner - the one labeled Epson works with both PhotoShop 3.04 as well with PhotoShop 5.02. The Twain driver made by LaserSoft - the supposedly better driver for photographs usually does not even load - as soon as it is loaded on screen it quits with an -25 error (which is a memory error). The rare time I managed to get it to work on 3.04 it will quit if I try to scan more than one scan at a time without restarting the G3 and or program. It also has blacked out information boxes - like the total MB size of the scan - and also crashes when trying to access some of the features in the program.

I have given PhotoShop 150 Mb and still get this -25 error - Epson first said:

It is a posibility that the driver from the CD is corrupt. I reinstalled and same thing happened and then they said:

>In order for the scanner to work correctly, we need to modify the SCSI card >to these parameters: > >1. Set transfer rate to 5-10 Mbps >2. Disable Wide Negotiation (if applicable) >3. Needs to be set to Asynchronous (disable synch negotiation) >4. Set to no Parity > >If the card you're currently using is not able to meet these >specifications, we may need to get the Adaptec 2906 SCSI card. This card >has advanced drivers that let you change the settings.

When I repsonded that the scanner performs perfectly with the Epson Twain driver and this leads me to conclude the problem is software related and since you supply this LaserSoft driver with the scanner you need to take a look at this, I was met with a stony silence - haven't heard from Epson since...

OrangeMicro responded immediately and offered to send a new beta firmware - theyoffered any assistance they could - great response.

As for LaserSoft - a German software co - who by the way wants you to upgrade to a "professional" version of LaserSoft for an additional $99 - when I wrote them as well as their American representative and described what is happening I recieved - NOTHING - no answer from either the German or the American distributor websites...

The crashes I have described happen even with minimal startup settings and all external Plug-ins in PhotoShop removed..

I have no more than 6' of SCSI cabling and the scanner is at the end and terminated - I believe there is noting wrong with the SCSI chaion since everything works perfectly, including the CD writer EXCEPT the Epson when using the LaserSoft driver..

Unless someone can figure this one out I see no recourse but to return the scanner and the transparancy adapter and buy another UMAX - the one I had worked flawlessly for 2 years - NEVER a crash when scanning - the only reason I bought the Epson was for the transparancy adapter...

Any suggestions greatly appreciated!

Christer Rosewell

-- Christer Rosewell (crose@home.com), April 05, 1999

Answers

>Hello all, >I bought a blue & White G3 Mac 300 and upgraded it to 192 MB and >installed the OrangeMicro Grappler 906F SCSI card.

Dear Mr. Rosewell, Please forgive my forwardness, but I just wanted to ask you 2 simple questions. The G3 you ordered came with no SCSI connections so you installed the OrangeMicro Grappler 906F SCSI card. Is this card just a SCSI connection or is it for running Win95? Did the SCSI card install easily? I have many peripherals and that is what is stopping me from getting a new G3. I live overseas and it is not easy talking to the sales people here. They don't like my American independance...they want me to do it "Their way". So, it's a new G3 or G3 Upgrade card for my 603ev processor.

OK. Now that that is out of the way...

Try this: Take out the Epson Twain Driver and put it in a folder on your desktop. So now you will have only the one Twain Driver in your preference folder. Reboot and try Photoshop again. I had trouble using the Microtek Twain Driver because the Alps Twain driver took precedence. You never know, it might work.

-- RS (justin_dec@hotmail.com), April 05, 1999.