[bksvol-discuss] Re: Introduction/Possibly Difficult Question...
- From: "Jackie McBride" <abletec@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 25 May 2008 08:16:44 -0700
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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