lolo799 wrote on Today, 10:42:Parallel port handscanners were more an amiga thing from what I remember. […]
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BitWrangler wrote on Yesterday, 13:12:
It was a Genius (The mouse people, not the ones that own a big chunk of Florida, the ones that made computer mice) hand scanner with a parallel port connection. The parallel port connection is the big deal here.
Parallel port handscanners were more an amiga thing from what I remember.
Talking about hand scanners, I received those last month:
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The Sagitta Gray's connector, most handscanners with an interface card usually had some round 8 or 9 pin plug.
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The Zscan name comes from the fact you scan in a Z motion, it's not super practical. The + model also does parallel lines scanning.
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And for something completely different:
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Interesting, I had never seen PCMCIA ones before, but both look like a Japanese market one, that's maybe why. The other, again, never seen that plug for a scanner before.
Parallel for Amiga or Atari ST was the only way to connect them on those platforms, though possibly the A600 and A1200 could have made use of the PCMCIA ones with drivers. But PC Parallel also existed, though as I say, hard to find and obscured by the sheer volume of the interface card versions. It is said that the Amiga parallel was "completely different" meaning that it implemented a full bi directional, but could work in lesser modes for printer compatibility. However, I have seen some devices converted that only needed 3 lines changed, so a simple plug convertor may have worked. SCSI types were available for flatbeds, but not sure it made it to handhelds.
I recall the set of varied weight mouse balls thing being a thing for gaming briefly. I think around the time when optical were still super picky with surfaces and USB wasn't well supported.
Edit: oh, thinking about what that Z scan implies with the image processing, I wonder if it was banned in US due to possibly a patent taken up by military as a defense secret... Image stitching... seems funny, or bizarre now, the most famous spat of this type was with browser encryption, but there was also a very behind the scenes thing going on with some image processing techniques in the mid-late 90s. Just from clues, it seems that DARPA or other agencies had come up with image stitching defense applications in the late 70s or 80s, maybe the "all around" camera view to headset in fighters, or maybe it was a reconnaissance imaging thing. .. and they were very touchy about it... but with applications to DTP, scanning, image processing on PCs, people kept re-inventing it through the 90s. They had quite a game of whack-a-mole on their hands to keep it in the bag. Ultimately they couldn't, dam broke in early noughts I think. Since then we're "allowed" 360 camera views in cars, auto landscape stitching on digicams, automated stitching in DTP and Image processing apps, and all that fun stuff... it was trying to happen earlier but getting squashed. One particular thing that "went away" was the project of this college student, wherein he took a regular QVGA webcam and by waving it around, or just holding it unsteadily, you could build up a static high res image. I also remember early digital astrophotography projects from amateurs "getting warned" in the late 90s timeframe, though I wasn't deep into that to know what exactly triggered it.
Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.
