Hard Hardware

All right, I'm getting used to OS X. I have two big challenges to go:

1. Get my printer to work (a Lexmark E210)
   
2. Get my scanner to work (a Mustek 1200 UB Plus)
   

Why this is a challenge? Because even under Windows XP the driver situation is not really terrific. Windows XP does not recognize my printer and scanner. For the printer the solution is easy: use the install CD that came with the printer to install the driver and you're done. What happens when a new Windows version comes out, I don't know. Probably my printer is useless under Windows by then. The scanner is a harder beast. It takes downloading and installing two huge driver sets from Mustek. And even then the scanner is not really reliable.

Under Linux you would expect an even worse situation. Wrong. Linux distributions like Fedora, Ubuntu and such automatically recognize my printer. The scanner is slightly harder: it takes downloading one firmware file and changing a setting in a config file. Done.

So now OS X. Luckily it resembles the Linux situation a little.

Lexmark E210
I downloaded the right drivers from the LinuxPrinting people. You can find it here. You need both packages, install the espgs package first. It's still PowerPC architecture, but it works. Add the printer, done.

Mustek 1200 UB Plus
Download the following from here:
TWAIN SANE Interface, SANE Preference Page, SANE Backends, libusb and install them in reverse order. Download the firmware file and make the same (!) change in the config file to override the scanner type. Done. Scanning works. There is on challenge left: the Apple Image Capture tool is a little hard-headed. It needs it's own configuration file describing my scanner. I leave that as an excercise to the reader. The command-line 'scanimage' command works. I'm ready for now.

Well, that was not too hard. I like this UNIX like OS!