Yeah, pretty much. I used to own a large flatbed Mustek scanner in the early 2000s; I even scanned some RPG books in service to the RPG book warez scene. Kind of ashamed now, but not so much. 😐

I bought (and still have) two UMAX Astra 1200S SCSI-2 flatbed scanners about twenty years ago. I paid $300.00 for the first one and $150.00 for the second one. They allow you to make a scan of a legal size document (8.5 inches x 14 inches/ 21.6 cm x 35.6 cm) without having to use software to stitch together smaller pieces. Given how time consuming and aggravating a task that was back then, it was worth having the capability.

I remember walking into retailers like CompUSA and seeing a number of legal size flatbed scanners from multiple manufacturers in the late '90s.

Given how large the boxes for those types of scanners are and the transport costs today, it probably just makes more sense for retailers to drop ship or ship direct rather than wasting valuable inventory space on such an item.

Yeh late 90's SCSI started to reach the home market with things like Zip disks and scanners, often the card was bundled with the device.
Didn't take long for parallel to hit the market once they became really affordable but the 2 standards still lived side by side in the home market.

Flatbed scanners were common till mid 2000's? when all in 1 devices started taking over which would typically be size of a A4/Legal page.

yeah. I still have one, the ultra awesome HP 4670, its basically the 'lid' of a flatbed scanner. you can place it on anything. its awesome and still works 😉 great for scanning pinball playfields and things.

appiah4 wrote:

Yeah, pretty much. I used to own a large flatbed Mustek scanner in the early 2000s; I even scanned some RPG books in service to the RPG book warez scene. Kind of ashamed now, but not so much. 😐

A4 size Musteks were pretty much "the" scanners around where we live, during that time, due to their very acceptable prices compared to other big names like HP and Epson. They were being connected thru parallel port though, SCSI was still a bit pricey.

Mine was a Mikrotek by the way. I don't remember the model number but it was a 300 dpi affodable model with a sofware better than what comes with a Mustek.

Most people I know tend to scan at work as well, on the office photocopier/MFP, rather than at home, and loads of people just send pics of documents on phone cameras. Plus it's a miniaturization thing - as CRTs gave way to LCDs, no one liked having big computer equipment at home. Big scanners (A3+) are still pretty expensive as well.

In comparison to a modern A4 scanner, my Microtek X6EL from the 90s, which was Legal size capable at reasonable DPI, was a long beast - still have it, it was my very first international computer purchase, shipped down under at great expense (Can't remember the company, but I remember there was some weird marketing crossover involving maple syrup?). Anyway, my dad has a newer Epson V770 and that is much thicker, but shorter, and with fantastic quality. USB is a lot better for Plug n Play than external SCSI too!

I have two, one a Canon with a parallel port (and a pass through to the printer), and a visioneer with a USB connection. The Canon oddly enough is really slim and small, but I'd imagine the USB one is probably much faster. The Canon I think cost like $50? Back in the day. The other was a hand me down, so no idea there was.

A4 flatbed scanners are still sufficiently common in households; they are just integrated into the MFU (printer+copier+scanner, and sometimes fax). There is just no justification for most people to have a separate scanner, as it has essentially the same footprint as an MFU, and you are likely to need a printer as well.

A3 flatbeds are another story. Also, if you have some need to scan very fine images at ultra-high DPI than the typical MFU does not provide, then maybe you can justify a separate device.