Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!bionet!ames!amdahl!pacbell!sactoh0!hrlaser
From: hrlaser@sactoh0 (Harv R. Laser)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Inexpensive Image Digitizer
Keywords: Digitizer, Cheap, Kit
Message-ID: <1097@sactoh0>
Date: 30 Jun 89 18:23:48 GMT
References: <6824@leadsv.UUCP> <17101@gryphon.COM> <18606@unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu>
Reply-To: hrlaser@sactoh0.UUCP (Harv R. Laser)
Organization: SAC-UNIX, Sacramento, Ca.
Lines: 50

In article <18606@unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu> ejkst@unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu (Eric J. Kennedy) writes:
>In article <17101@gryphon.COM> jdm@gryphon.COM (John Mesiavech) writes:
>>Go to thy nearest store, check out "IMG Scan" by SunRize Industries, list $150.
>
>>It consists of a CCD sensor connected to a printer head via a fiber optic cable,
>>thereby turning an ordinary printer into a drum scanner.  Resolution, whatever
>>is the finest pixel rate on your printer.  It's slow, but works.
>
>Anybody know if this would work on an HP Deskjet [plus]?
>
>
Does the HP Deskjet plus have "an adjustable vertical line spacing
and a print head which moves accross the carriage"? These are the
two requirements of an IMG Scan installation according to SunRize's
literature.

I saw the IMG Scan running/working at the recent SF Amiga Festival
in SunRize's booth. They had it installed in a 9-pin dot matrix
printer, I believe it was some model of Star printer. The sensor
was affixed to the printer's ribbon cartridge with some kind of
aluminum TAPE. There was what looked like an 8x10 glossy picture of
a portrait of a girl in the printer where the paper would normally
feed and the IMG Scan was moving back and forth across the picture,
rather slowly, one line at a time and the image was being fed to an
Amiga and displayed on its monitor. The quality was quite good but
as John said the process is slow since your printer is kicked into
"graphics mode" during scanning. 

As far as the installtion, I wondered and asked about how precise
an installation could be obtained by taping the unit to the ribbon
cartridge or print head. The girl working the booth held up a small
black metal clip and said "on some printers it can be installed
with these too." I told her I had an Epson JX-80 (in which the
print head moves but the ribbon cartridge doesn't since it's a
full-width cart and that the print head had large heat sink blades
surrounding it). She didn't know if it would install on a JX-80,
which is, afterall, a rather common printer. 

So if the DeskJet has a print head which shuttles back and forth
and you have access to it to tape or clip the IMG Scan to it and
leave it that way during printer operation then it would work. If
not, probably not. From what I remember of the DeskJet's case and
configuration it *seems* unlikely to me that it'd work. 



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