[bksvol-discuss] Re: Introduction/Possibly Difficult Question...
- From: "Chris Hofstader" <cdh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 25 May 2008 12:05:09 -0400
Well, thus far, our tests with this scanner, OmniPage 15 and this relatively
low quality book has been incredibly good. We should have it finished later
today if my allergy remedies don't cause me to fall asleep before I can
complete a useful task.
cdh
Chris Hofstader
CUNY, BSO, ATG, Odds and Ends
email: cdh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Blog: http://www.blindconfidential.blogspot.com
Skype: BlindChristian
phone: 727-896-6393
-----Original Message-----
From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jackie McBride
Sent: Sunday, May 25, 2008 11:17 AM
To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Introduction/Possibly Difficult Question...
Chris, u wrote:
btw, did your gift subscription start working?
No, not that I know of--they certainly haven't notified me to that
effect. Glad u got it working. Let me know anytime I can help. Those
low quality paperbacks can be a pain both in terms of going thru the
doc feeder & in terms of proofreading.
Blessings.
On 5/25/08, Chris Hofstader <cdh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi G. Cindy,
>
> Well, lots of people from here and the Blind Programming mailing list sent
> much appreciated advice in off-list emails directly to me but none solved
or
> could solve the problem without a tiny bit of information that I neglected
> to include in my sad story because I had forgotten about it.
>
> My ancient Dell XP workhorse came with both USB 1.xx and 2.0 ports. The
> Xerox scanner requires 2.0 but I had plugged it into a 1.xx jack. When I
> remembered that this had possibly been the root cause of my problems, I
> switched USB port and, voila, it went through all of the diagnostics
> perfectly.
>
> Today, I will hopefully succeed in scanning a book about Drupal the free
and
> open source content management system for making web sites with really
cool
> features. My lovely wife Susan will hopefully verify it and add textual
> augmentations to replace graphics later today or tomorrow.
>
> A handful of us are also starting BlindNerdBookClub@xxxxxxxxxxxxx where
> geeks like me and my friends can suggest books from all areas of the
> scientific world and we'll vote on which to get next. The suggester has
to
> pay for the book and have it delivered to our house as I do not want to
> underwrite this effort myself. The subject matter includes all things
> scientific and not just stuff for us hacker types. The goal is one book
or
> more per week scanned and uploaded. The other rule is that books I
suggest
> go to the head of the line because I'm a selfish bastard who reads really
> obscure books about cognitive linguistics, ancient languages, the
migration,
> mixing and evolution of human languages and the etymology of lots of
things
> related to English, the grandest language ever to be spoken and written by
> humans. Fortunately, I can't read more than one of these per month so I
> won't go to the head of the class too often.
>
> I look forward to working with you folks a lot in the future.
>
> Enjoy,
> cdh
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Grandma Cindy
> Sent: Sunday, May 25, 2008 2:37 AM
> To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Introduction/Possibly Difficult Question...
>
> Oh, Chris. I was practically in tears after reading your sad story--no
> kidding. I normally wouldn't have read the whole thing, it being about
> technical things that I don't need to know and can't help with, but your
> first paragraph made me so happy--you and your wife are exactly the kind
of
> people we need for so many "nerdy" books. I kept reading hoping that the
> ending would be positive and you were ready to go. Sigh.
>
> I hope you get the advice you need.
>
> G.Cindy
>
>
>
> --- On Sat, 5/24/08, Chris Hofstader <cdh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
>> Date: Saturday, May 24, 2008, 6:00 AM
>> Hi,
>>
>>
>> I've been working as a contractor for BSO for some time
>> now and have been a
>> member for a very long time. A few friends of mine on the
>> blind programming
>> mailing list and I wanted to find a way to get our very
>> nerdy books scanned
>> and onto Bookshare.org. I volunteered to get a scanner and
>> my sighted wife
>> volunteered to do a lot of verification and add textual
>> augmentations to
>> describe diagrams and such. In theory we were off and
>> running.
>>
>>
>>
>> Disaster one hit when we found out that our trusty, albeit
>> ancient, Epson
>> scanner had stopped working and that there were no drivers
>> for it to be used
>> with Vista, now mostly a requirement in our household. So,
>> undeterred, I
>> surfed over to the newegg.com web site and started
>> searching for a
>> replacement scanner that had one requirement - a reasonably
>> sized document
>> feeder.
>>
>>
>>
>> I came upon two that sounded pretty good. One was an Epson
>> with a 30 sheet
>> document feeder and the other was the Xerox DocuMate 152.
>> Both cost about
>> $350 and because the Xerox supported duplex scanning and
>> had a 50 sheet ADF,
>> I chose it.
>>
>>
>>
>> At this point, dismay turned into anticipation as we waited
>> for the shiny
>> new scanner to arrive at our house which it did late
>> Wednesday afternoon.
>> Like kids on Christmases Eve we had to wait to open it the
>> following day as
>> that evening had already been booked.
>>
>>
>>
>> Susan, my lovely wife, took the thing out of its box early
>> Thursday,
>> assembled the small number of parts one needs to attach and
>> started loading
>> the software. Here is where the real fear and loathing
>> starts. First off,
>> the document says nothing about having to download special
>> drivers for
>> Vista; the box says "Vista Ready" and the
>> installation routine says nothing
>> about downloading anything special for the newish OS. OF
>> course, at the end
>> of the list of instructions, it gave a URL for getting the
>> Vista drivers
>> but, by that time, we had already ground poor Susan's
>> main PC to a near
>> haul. Fortunately, Vista has restore points so she was
>> able to
>> automatically back out most of the install and get the rest
>> out via the
>> control panel.
>>
>>
>>
>> We then attached the device to an old XP machine that we
>> use for backups (we
>> have a pair of monstrous external drives that mirror each
>> other and hold all
>> of our important data attached to it). This is a five or
>> six year old
>> absolutely vanilla Dell with nothing special that might
>> cause hardware
>> conflicts.
>>
>>
>>
>> Following the instructions on the installation CDs to the
>> letter of the law
>> (not exactly an easy task with JAWS) I got everything to
>> install without any
>> crashes and only the typical reboots that accompany most
>> any installation
>> procedure. It was now time to turn on the beast and give
>> it a try.
>>
>>
>>
>> I powered it on using its own power switch and opened
>> OmniPage 15. JAWS
>> says for help using OmniPage hit F1 twice quickly. Often
>> JAWS keystrokes
>> teach me a bit about the application so I took a look at
>> what they had. It
>> turned out to be documentation on how to use OmniPage 10.0
>> with JAWS and
>> said that it didn't necessarily work with other
>> versions. JAWS worked
>> poorly with version 15 but good enough to try to get the
>> scanner going.
>>
>>
>>
>> I went to the OmniPage 15 File/Get Page/Scan menu and hit
>> ENTER. This put
>> me into a dialogue that asked if I wanted to download the
>> latest scanner
>> database and then choose which one I wanted to use with my
>> hardware. I
>> followed the instruction and on the next page of the
>> wizard, chose the top
>> one of three drivers available for the DocuMate 152. It
>> then told me that
>> not all tests were run but gave me only a
>> "finish" button to proceed which I
>> pressed.
>>
>>
>>
>> OmniPage then told me that an unspecified error had
>> occurred. I tried the
>> other two drivers with identical results (except once when
>> I did get an
>> error message but for no reason obvious to me the pages I
>> had in the ADF got
>> sucked through the scanner. I fiddled about with all sorts
>> of different
>> settings that looked like they might be helpful and even
>> when to the
>> scanners and cameras page in Control Panel only to crash
>> while moving
>> through its tabs.
>>
>>
>>
>> So, utter dismay and despair, fear and loathing.
>>
>>
>>
>> I called the 800 number for Xerox technical support and
>> connected with a
>> pretty well uninformed individual who, after having me try
>> a few things,
>> said that she would have to call back on Tuesday afternoon
>> and do something
>> using remote access to take over my PC to get it figured
>> out. More fear and
>> loathing as I had forgotten this was a holiday weekend.
>>
>>
>>
>> I tried a few more things with the device and made no
>> progress.
>>
>>
>>
>> A relatively low cost scanner with a 50 page duplex ADF
>> would be great for
>> scanning whole books. Said scanner that sits like a
>> toaster on my desk is
>> of no use to anyone.
>>
>>
>>
>> So, after my long tale of disappointment and misfortune,
>> does anyone here
>> have any ideas about how to get a Xerox DocuMate 152
>> running either on XP or
>> Vista?
>>
>>
>>
>> Frustrated,
>>
>> cdh
>
>
>
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--
Jackie McBride
Please join my fight against breast cancer
<http://teamacs.acsevents.org/site/TR?px=1790196&pg=personal&fr_id=3489>
& Check out my homepage at:
www.abletec.serverheaven.net
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