2002-Feb-28

Plugged in Memorex 6142u USB scanner:

Feb 28 00:16:43 rainier /netbsd: Primax USB Scanner, class 0/0, rev 1.00/0.04,
addr 2, uhub0 port 2 not configured

I read that ugen(4) and uhid(4) are "generic" USB drivers. So I add ugen and uhid back to my kernel. So I built new kernel and rebooted:

ugen0 at uhub0 port 2
ugen0: Primax USB Scanner, rev 1.00/0.04, addr 2

Then I added sane-backends package, built via pkgsrc.

I had noticed back on Sept. 27, that sane-backends and sane-frontends package descriptions are the same. This is confusing so I send-pr'd it: pkg/15760. (Fixed and closed on 14/Mar/2002.)

I didn't have any usb devices so I did:

sh MAKEDEV ugen0

And /dev/ugen0.00 through /dev/ugen0.15 were created.

I used sane-find-scanner(1) as a normal user but didn't find anything. As root, using /dev/ugen0.00, it found it:

sane-find-scanner: searching for SCSI scanners:
sane-find-scanner: checking /dev/ugen0.00... open ok
sane-find-scanner: found SCSI disk "  " at device /dev/ugen0.00
sane-find-scanner: searching for USB scanners:
sane-find-scanner: checking /dev/ugen0.00... open ok, but vendor and product could NOT be identified
sane-find-scanner: found USB scanner (UNKNOWN vendor and product) at device /dev/ugen0.00

Well, I found some notes online saying some Primax scanners use E3 chipset. So I grabbed it (its a diff) and patched the source in the package work directory. But it didn't build right -- probably because I did ./configure wrong. I tried to add the patch to the patches directory (and did "makepatchsum") but it has conflicts and the other patches failed too. So I tried to do "make" in parts: fetch, checksum, extract, patch, then did my manual patch here, then configure and build. It was successfully built -- so I did a "make install".

It didn't work. I saw it wasn't built or installed, because patches didn't apply perfectly. I fixed, but couldn't get it to install correctly. So did a "make clean", "make patch", manually patched and fixed reject, and then "make build". This new E3 driver is called "viceo". This patch was from http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/stevenel/scanner/.

It didn't work. Then I read some sane mailing list messages, and it doesn't appear that Memorex 6142u is even working yet. I have wasted my time (again).