Abaton Hand Scan SCSI Interface + Accel SC scanner

[andrewgurn]

Afternoon everyone,

I bought a battery-bombed Mac Plus recently (the logic board works!.. the analog board, not so much, but that's a project for another day), and it came along with some peripherals. One of which is this Abaton Hand Scan SCSI Interface and Accel Model SC hand-operated scanner.

Since I cannot find any information about these devices online, I figured I'd drop a post here for future reference. Hopefully some seasoned computing veteran will come across it and can offer some information on how to get it going again!

The Abaton Hand Scan SCSI Interface box powers on and supplies termination power to my BlueSCSI in the other port. It is recognized by my PowerMac 7600 running Mac OS 7.6 and shows up in SCSIProbe, as seen in the screenshot.

The Accel SC scanner connects to the port in the back on the Abaton box (that "A" logo on the scanner itself is Accel's logo, not Abaton's, as far as I can tell). When the button is pressed, nothing happens. I expect, possibly wrongly, that that array of LEDs (?) below the roller would light up, but maybe this only happens when proper drivers are installed and the scanning software tells it to be ready (also: ?). There are some controls on the scanner that adjustment thereof does not seem to do anything given the scanner's current state. The board inside is labeled Mitsumi.

There seems to be a single archive of Abaton stuff for Mac available online (located here). It has a driver labeled "Abaton Scanner Driver 2.0.3" (installed but not helping), a Photoshop Plugin (which I haven't tried yet), and a Desk Accessory (that fails to recognize my setup; see the error displayed on the screenshot).

I cannot find any Accel drivers anywhere.

If you see this and know anything at all about these guys, let me know. Thanks!

 

[Byrd]

Try to find an old version of VueScan which purports to work with nearly all scanners including SCSI (later versions for OS X and Windows 10/11 still do SCSI!), there is an older Mac OS 8/9 version here:

VueScan 7.6.64 - Macintosh Garden

VueScan is a powerful scanning program that works with most scanners to produce high-quality scans that have excellent color fidelity. It takes advantage of the advanced hardware capabilities of most scanners on the market today, and helps you do batch scanning while at the same time producing...

macintoshgarden.org

VueScan Mac OS – Quadras, Cubes and G5s

Posts about VueScan Mac OS written by happymacs

happymacs.wordpress.com

 

[andrewgurn]

Try to find an old version of VueScan which purports to work with nearly all scanners including SCSI (later versions for OS X and Windows 10/11 still do SCSI!), there is an older Mac OS 8/9 version here:

VueScan 7.6.64 - Macintosh Garden

VueScan is a powerful scanning program that works with most scanners to produce high-quality scans that have excellent color fidelity. It takes advantage of the advanced hardware capabilities of most scanners on the market today, and helps you do batch scanning while at the same time producing...

macintoshgarden.org

VueScan Mac OS – Quadras, Cubes and G5s

Posts about VueScan Mac OS written by happymacs

happymacs.wordpress.com

Thanks for the idea. Sadly, VueScan doesn't recognize it

 

[adespoton]

I think I used one of the Accel SC scanners back in 1990 or so; however, the one I used had a SCSI interface and was plugged directly into a Mac Plus, without the Abaton box. It had custom Accel scanner software and a driver that needed to be installed before it would work. The Abaton box sounds like it takes a serial or parallel signal and converts to/from SCSI?

 

[andrewgurn]

I think I used one of the Accel SC scanners back in 1990 or so; however, the one I used had a SCSI interface and was plugged directly into a Mac Plus, without the Abaton box. It had custom Accel scanner software and a driver that needed to be installed before it would work. The Abaton box sounds like it takes a serial or parallel signal and converts to/from SCSI?

The scanner is an 8 pin Mini-DIN, like you'd use to plug into the modem or printer port. The Abaton box has that 8 pin input labeled "Scanner". So it seems to be an 8 pin serial to SCSI convertor of sorts.

Just to see what would happen, I did try the Accel scanner plugged directly into the printer port and ran VueScan, but it didn't make a difference. Not sure that had any chance of working anyway without a selectable driver in the Chooser

 

[NJRoadfan]

These were likely direct clones of what was commonly sold as the Logitech ScanMan hand scanner. Macs got a SCSI interface, while PCs had a dedicated ISA interface. Even the Apple II got an interface that sold as the Vitesse Quickie.

 

[nathall]

“Treat as The Fragile.”

 

[andrewgurn]

These were likely direct clones of what was commonly sold as the Logitech ScanMan hand scanner. Macs got a SCSI interface, while PCs had a dedicated ISA interface. Even the Apple II got an interface that sold as the Vitesse Quickie.

I see, thanks. Might be worth a shot to try out some Logitech drivers then. They even have the ScanMan driver for Classic Mac available on their FTP site

“Treat as The Fragile.”

Haha yeah, there is some quality Engrish on the scanner label. Also of note, the Abaton interface box is serial # 420

 

[cheesestraws]

These were likely direct clones of what was commonly sold as the Logitech ScanMan hand scanner. Macs got a SCSI interface, while PCs had a dedicated ISA interface. Even the Apple II got an interface that sold as the Vitesse Quickie.

There were also mini-podules available for the Acorn A30x0/4000 series, and I had a cartridge interface for the Atari (which I think @croissantking now has, IIRC). Those things got everywhere.