RE: filmscanners: Laptop configuration
Effective USB 1.1 throughput is up to 7.5 MB/s, the claimed 12 MB/s is rather theoretical estimation. Alex -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Tom A. Trottier Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2001 02:31 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: filmscanners: Laptop configuration USB is limited to 11 Mb. You'd be better with 1394/firewire or ultra wide SCSI. Tom On Wednesday, October 17, 2001 at 17:54, Hemingway, David J [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote on RE: filmscanners: Laptop configuration, saying.. You can purchase a Eiger PCMCIA SCSI card on Ebay for less than $40 David -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2001 7:32 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: filmscanners: Laptop configuration The LS40 isn't 4000dpi though. Resolution matters! [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Mark Otway) wrote: All the alternatives to the SS4000 are so much more expensive that you would save quite a bit by buying that PCMCIA SCSI card and an SS4000. Out of interest, how does the Nikon LS40 compare to the SS4000? There's a company in the UK from which I can get the Nikon for £499 (ex vat), and I wouldn't have to worry about SCSI, as it supports USB. And, of course, I'd get a full UK warranty. Mark --- Abacurial Information Management Consultants --- Tom A. Trottier, President http://abacurial.com 758 Albert St, Ottawa ON Canada K1R 7V8 N45.412 W75.714 +1 613 860-6633 fax:231-6115ICQ:57647974 They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -- Benjamin Franklin
RE: filmscanners: Laptop configuration
The LS40 isn't 4000dpi though. Resolution matters! True, true. But I'm not sure how much it matters. I believe the LS40 is 2900dpi? In which case it's probably going to be plenty for me - I'm only intending to create/store images which are 2-3Mb, if that. Mark
Re: filmscanners: Laptop configuration
I have used two film scanners with USB version 1.1 interfaces, with both a P-100 and Celeron 500 CPU (and between 64 and 600+ megs of memory). I also previously had a SCSI interfaced film scanner. The image file sizes ranged from 18 megs (2400 dpi/8 bit) to about 50 megs (2820 dpi/16 bit). I have not found the throughput painfully slow in either circumstance, although the speed between the SCSI and USB with the same resolution and basically same scanner (HP S-10 versus S-20) was probably 20-30% slower with USB. Due to other processing considerations during transfers of scans to your computer, the interface speed differences between SCSI and USB are not the principal bottlenecks. With higher dpi scanners, perhaps firewire would provide some advantage, if the processor, memory and hard drive were fast enough, but in more situations a USB interface probably would not be an albatross. I'd think that if the restriction is the USB interface, manufacturers might begin to offer USB 1.1 and ver 2.0, unless hardware costs or licensing fees are prohibitive for that upgrading. Art Mark Otway wrote: Arthur wrote: Do you have a USB connection on your laptop? Yes, I've got two. :-) But obviously scanning requires a large amount of throughput and USB isn't the fastest i/face in the world. So if anyone made a firewire scanner it would be preferable... Steve wrote: This may or may not be relevant but there is no USB with NT. Yes no - NT4 and previous don't support USB (unless you can find 3rd party drivers). But since Win2K USB support has been native in NT. I'm running Windows XP on the laptop, so it's not an issue. Thanks Mark .
Re: filmscanners: Laptop configuration
A minor point for future clarity: Little b means bits. Big B means bytes. When people write Mb (whether 11 or 12 for USB) they mean mega-bits. My scanner, attached to my computer using a USB 11Mb/s interface (or is it 12Mb/s? I can never remember which) has such low resolution that a full-frame scan of a 35mm negative is only 10MB in size. -- USB is the only popular interface that is a practical limit to scan rates. Many scanner transports seem to run at about 1-2MB/s, some maybe as high as 5 MB/s. So the interface deserves performance consideration. If you tend to multitask (on a personal level) USB gets dreadful when trying any combination of unloading a memory card, scanning and/or printing. Wire
Re: filmscanners: Laptop configuration
Presumably you mean USB is 12Mbits per second. Whilst this is much slower than firewire or ultra wide SCSI (I think scanners only use slower versions) the impact is not that great in the grand scheme where focussing, positioning and actual scanning are not too fast. Yes, there is a difference, but is nowhere near the difference of the interface capability. Steve - Original Message - From: Tom A. Trottier [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2001 1:31 AM Subject: RE: filmscanners: Laptop configuration USB is limited to 11 Mb. You'd be better with 1394/firewire or ultra wide SCSI. Tom On Wednesday, October 17, 2001 at 17:54, Hemingway, David J [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote on RE: filmscanners: Laptop configuration, saying.. You can purchase a Eiger PCMCIA SCSI card on Ebay for less than $40 David -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2001 7:32 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: filmscanners: Laptop configuration The LS40 isn't 4000dpi though. Resolution matters! [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Mark Otway) wrote: All the alternatives to the SS4000 are so much more expensive that you would save quite a bit by buying that PCMCIA SCSI card and an SS4000. Out of interest, how does the Nikon LS40 compare to the SS4000? There's a company in the UK from which I can get the Nikon for £499 (ex vat), and I wouldn't have to worry about SCSI, as it supports USB. And, of course, I'd get a full UK warranty. Mark --- Abacurial Information Management Consultants --- Tom A. Trottier, President http://abacurial.com 758 Albert St, Ottawa ON Canada K1R 7V8 N45.412 W75.714 +1 613 860-6633 fax:231-6115 ICQ:57647974 They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -- Benjamin Franklin
