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Comments from readers:
Subject: I hate my scanner! Sent: 31-07-1998 06:08 Received: 31-07-1998 09:14 From: Jackie R. To: termination@chipmunk.nl I have an Astra 610s that has always given me so may problems that I am ready to trash it! I opened it up in the hope to find the terminator and correct the problem as you explained, but alas, the insides don't look like your pictures so the 610 must be different. I have had to initialize my disk 6 times and reinstall the system folder at least twelve times in the last 2 months due to a corrupted system folder which I suspect was probably caused by the scanner. I am so frustrated and just at wit's end. And I concur with the previous writer who complained of the scanner not coming with a decent manual. No where does it say that a Mac user should trash the PUSh button prior to restarting or experience an immediate freeze. How lame!!! I am telling friend to avoid Umax scanners no matter how good the deal. thanks for letting me vent. Please let me know if you have any suggestions for the 610s.
Subject: UMAX Responds! Sent: 20-07-1998 18:28 Received: 21-07-1998 08:55 From: Deb To: termination@chipmunk.nl Thought you'd like to know that when I called UMAX Tech Support regarding problems with my Astra 600 scanner, they told me right up front to visit your Web site for the fix. Apparently they read our lips! <g> Thanks for the assist. You're right in that UMAX makes good scanners for the price. Best regards, Deb, from the beautiful Rocky Mountains of Colorado
Subject: Thanks a million Sent: 09-07-1998 05:23 Received: 09-07-1998 12:05 From: Dino To: termination@chipmunk.nl I had many problems with my Astra 600s. I called Umax and upon learning that I had a Diamond fireport card they refused to help me. Well I called Diamond and upon finding out that I had an Astra 600s the tech support guy told me that I MUST USE and active terminator on this scanner. He told me that there was a site "chipmunk something or another" that had a fix, which of course Diamond does not endorse. (wink, wink) Well thanks to Diamonds tech support person I found you guys. I applied the fix and voila, everything works. Thanks, Dino
Subject: UMAX scanner and Termination Sent: 01-07-1998 19:59 Received: 01-07-1998 20:25 From: Petersen, Chris I e-mailed you a few days ago and thanked you for your web-page and information on termination concerning the UMAX scanner. At the time, I thought everything was working properly and I didn't need to apply your fix. Well, I was wrong. I did apply your fix and now everything is working fine. Here is a description of my setup and problems I was having: First of all I'd like to say that it is a bit of a challenge to get a scsi bus working correctly when you are combining narrow and wide devices. The important issue is to make sure every line gets terminated. I have been doing this scsi thing on PC's for a number of years and thought I understood things pretty well. I didn't! It's still easy to screw it up. Here is a picture of my internal devices and how they were connected: SCSI --> Ultra Wide --> Narrow --> Ultra 32x --> Narrow Card disk drive Jaz Drive CD-Rom CD Writer I am using a 68-pin ribbon cable and an Adaptec 2940UW card. The 3 narrow (SCSI 2) devices have a 68 to 50 pin adapter. I was terminating the chain internally with the Narrow CD Writer. While all these devices were working correctly in this configuration, it is incorrect and affected the behavior of my external devices which I'll describe later. The error in this setup is that the high byte is not being terminated since I was terminating on a narrow device. If you have a mixture of narrow and wide devices, always make a wide device the last in the chain, or make sure you have a wide terminator at the end. I then changed the order of my internal devices to: SCSI --> Narrow --> Ultra 32x --> Narrow --> Ultra Wide Card CD Writer CD-Rom Jaz Drive disk drive I now terminate the internal chain with the Ultra-Wide disk drive. This solved the problem with the external device I was having problems with. Namely, a DAT tape backup. Until I resolved all the termination issues, this device would not work properly. All my other devices did work properly by the way. Now here is a picture of my external devices: SCSI --> Narrow --> Narrow (SCSI I) Card Dat Drive UMAX Scanner 68-50 pin adapter (High byte terminated) Once I got the internal bus terminated correctly, the external devices were recognized and the scanner worked fine. I assumed that the DAT drive was working fine too. Bad assumption! When I tried to make some backup tapes, I got some strange behavior. The software would not recognize some previous tapes I had made and was not able to recognize any new tapes either. These were problems I never had before. The DAT drive has always worked flawless for me in the past. I then removed the UMAX scanner from the chain and terminated the DAT drive. Everything worked fine. I knew I had a termination (or cable length) problem at this point. Then I decided to take your advice. I opened up the scanner, which was extremely easy, two screws and I was staring at the circuit board. I moved the jumper, which was exactly where you said it would be and then placed it back in the SCSI chain. This was the problem. My DAT drive now works with the Scanner in the chain. A few comments. Always test each device in the chain after making a change. The new device may work fine, but another device might break, if there is some sort of termination problem. Always terminate on a wide device, if possible, when mixing narrow and wide devices. Here is a list of my SCSI devices for anyone that is interested: Adaptec 2940UW Iomega Jaz drive Plextor Ultra SCSI 32x CD-Rom drive (excellent drive BTW) HP 4020i SCSI-2 CD-Writer (2x,4x) IBM Ultra Wide Hard Disk (2 gig) WangDAT Dat Drive (3200?) UMAX Astra 1200S Scanner I still haven't heard back from UMAX technical support. They state on their web page that their scanner (1200S) is incompatible with the 2940UW. The solution is to use their cheapo card. This is total BS. It works fine with the 2940UW, provide you deal with termination properly. My take on it is that they don't want people to open up their scanner and flip the switch and they don't want to go through the hassle of talking everyone through their scsi termination issues. Either that, or they don't understand the issues, which I find hard to believe. Thanks again, Chris Petersen
Subject: Thankyou SO MUuuuuuuuuucccccccCH Sent: 30-04-1998 05:36 Received: 30-04-1998 12:01 To: termination@chipmunk.nl I recently bought a Umax Asta series scanner that would never scan or be recongnized in the SCSI chain. I thought it was because I used it on a older mac model (MacIIci) but it wasnt. Every time i use graphics applications to 'aquire' from the scanner, the programs would either freeze up or quit. BUT...thanks to these informative web pages, i now can scan this cute picture of my cat. Thankyou!
the active terminator into the back of my PowerLook II and it's LED remained unlite. There is and unmarked jumper near the scsi socket and the center lead was a power source so I changed the jumper and now the active terminator lights up. Don't know if it made any difference yet. Robert Ryan Berkeley, CA., USA
Hi, I bought an UMAX Astra Scanna for my girlfriend for her birthday. At the time I thought it would be good idea! Then the trouble started... Firstly, the english software on the cd-rom was corrupt. We couldn't do a complete install. The japanese software installed fine, but, due to our lacking education, we cannot read japanese (not to mention the fact that we don't have japanese system software...). UMAX any help?? Nope. Secondly, this terminator thing. We can use the scanner (even though we can never complete the install of the scanner software, we obviously must get 'enough' software installed!), but only if the scanner was the only SCSI device. Read your page and now I have something to do with those screwdrivers I own! Good stuff! Perhaps the people at UMAX should have a read aswell... Will I buy UMAX again? NO FUCKING WAY! J
Just wanted to say THANKS! for the info/instructions on the UMAX scanner termination. That solved one of my two complaints with the scanner -- the other one being that it came with *no* printed manuals or documentation! Anyway, thanks again! -Matt B.
THANK YOU!!!!! Whoever you are, I can't thank you enough... my Astra 600 finally works now the way it should have out of the box... I have sent 3 e-mails to Umax and haven't heard anything from them for the last 3 months about this termination problem with the scanner... but you have solved it! I can't believe how easy it was to do too. Again thanks a million for putting that page up!
FYI everyone... I have a UMAX Astra 600 that would never succesfully scan unless it was the only device on the SCSI chain or all other devices were powered off (7500/200)... then I performed the simple jumper switch described in the URL above and now my scanner works GREAT!! Unbelievable! Nice scanner, but UMAX's support of their products s#$@! big time... I sent them three different e-mails to their support address over the last 3 months and have heard not one peep from them... what a joke. I like the scanner, but I will never buy a UMAX product again because of their complete lack of support and total ignorance of their own products (if you read the info at the above URL you'll see what I mean). -Greg Morin
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