Epson Perfection 1670 Scanner won't work

[spyder79]

I have an Epson Perfection 1670 scanner that I have used through several Kubuntu distribution upgrades. I don't use it much, but eventually got around to getting all the right software installed to make it work with Hardy. Flawless functionality for the few test scans I made a few months ago, using both XSane and Kooka. Now, I find that it still appears to work fine, but it only returns a white page (blank). None of the usual errors or problems associated with an incomplete installation, or other problem. The carriage physically moves and the scanning light (moving white lamp) is operational. In fact, everything seems perfectly normal except that there isn't any image displayed (except blank white).

I wonder if the image sensor is dead, but not sure how to test that. Does anyone have ideas on what to do next?

[dibl]

Re: Epson Perfection 1670 Scanner won't work

There's a package whose name is escaping me atm -- I think maybe "xsane-extras" or "libsane-extras" or something like that. It makes the difference on my Epson Perfection scanner.

But your symptom is strange -- I've never had the light and scanning bed work, without the right driver running. You might have lost the image sensor. :P

[spyder79]

Re: Epson Perfection 1670 Scanner won't work

Yes. One or both of those packages are required for functionality, don't remember for certain. But in the past, it has been a go, no-go situation for getting the scanner to work. If the scanning program can find the scanner it works fine. But I've gone through all that install stuff and had a working scanner as of awhile ago. Haven't changed anything significant with Hardy aside from the usual updates. I guess I could borrow a Windoze box and install the scanner to see if it works, but what a pain! I was hoping someone would have a suggestion, or maybe an alternate way to test the scanner.

[dibl]

Re: Epson Perfection 1670 Scanner won't work

I was hoping someone would have a suggestion, or maybe an alternate way to test the scanner.

You could make a Live CD of some different Linux distro, and boot it. E-Live and sidux come to mind as distros with good hardware support:

http://www.elivecd.org/

http://sidux.com/module-News-display-sid-519.html


EDIT: Just checked my Epson Perfection 1640SU -- it works out of the box on 9.10 with xsane and nothing else -- no tweaks needed.

[kjjjjshab]

Re: Epson Perfection 1670 Scanner won't work

sane-find-scanner

(I can't test this myself for fear of waking my daughter [my Epson is NOISY], but it should get you some results...)

Found via this thread (below), which actually contains some other useful info for you regarding adding the iscan-2.8.0/backend/epkowa.conf from the source to /etc/sane.d - not your model, but perhaps you can figure it out nonetheless.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...are-12-604148/

But maybe that info is too distro specific and/or old.