OSX isn’t known for it’s great scanner support or third-party scanner software. Especially with older models, chances are slim that there’s an official OSX driver. If you’re lucky, VueScan will support it, but in my case, they don’t support the old flatbed scanner I scored at the flea market this weekend. A Medion MD 4394 USB-powered scanner for 5 euro. Cha-ching!
So, I want to get a Medion MD 4394 scanner working on Snow Leopard (OSX 10.6) but Medion has no drivers for OSX and VueScan doesn’t support this particular model. Where does that leave us then? Never fear. The open-source community is here to save us, again. The TWAIN SANE interface for OSX. This makes it possible to interact with the scanner, but the process of getting this configured correctly is, in true open-source fashion, a great big pain in the ass. Therefore, if anyone out there had the (mis)fortune to stumble across this particular scanner and wants to hook it up to their Mac, I hope my experience will at least save you some time.
Step 1: Download and install all five SANE packages (gettext, libusb, backends, pref.pane, TWAIN UI)
Step 2: Download the scanner firmware (aka. the *.usb file). First, I tried the official ePlus2k.usb from Medion, but no luck. Then I got my grimy hands on the Arctec48.usb firmware. Evidently, this particular model is an Arctec in sheep’s clothing… or a wolf in Medion clothing.
Step 3: Unzip and place the firmware file in /usr/local/share/sane/artec_eplus48/
Step 4: Make the firmware open to the world. This might be overkill, but whatever. In a terminal window type:
sudo chmod 777 /usr/local/share/sane/artec_eplus48/Arctec48.usb
Enter your user password when prompted.
Step 5: Plug in and turn on the scanner (if you haven’t already).
Step 6: Test it out. Open the terminal window again and try the following commands:
sane-find-scanner
scanimage -L
If everything is working, you should see your device listed. Something like “found USB scanner (vendor=0x05d8, product=0×4003, chip=GT-6816) at libusb:001:004-05d8-4003-00-00” and “device `artec_eplus48u:libusb:001:004-05d8-4003-00-00′ is a Artec E+ 48U flatbed scanner” respectively.
You can also try scanning an image via the command line, using:
scanimage –format tiff > test.tiff
Step 7: Use a front end, such as Snac, Image Capture or Adobe Photoshop to make life easier. I had no luck with Image Capture, but Snac does a decent enough job. The downside is it only saves in TIFF format which is rather large for attaching a document to an email. An easy work around is to simply open the file with Preview.app and then select FILE > SAVE AS… and save the file as a JPEG or PDF.
Step 8: Enjoy your scanner… until next year’s flea markets offer up the next antique gadgets!
