Ted BC wrote:
I recently got a new iMac and installed Photoshop 7.0. My scanner, a Umax Astra 2200 runs only in OS 9 so i installed the scanner SW. If I scan directly thru Umax, I don’t get an image. If I try to go thru PS (my first choice) I don’t get a Twain choice in File>import. Where did Twain select go, any ideas?
TWAIN is OS-specific. It is designed to provide a common interface to the scanner so that all applications which run under that OS may access the scanner, in a fashion similar to a printer driver. Once a particular printer driver has been installed, all applications which are capable of printing can access that printer. TWAIN is more universal, since all scanner manufacturers support TWAIN, and do not require the installation of separate drivers for each model of scanner. If TWAIN is installed, and a TWAIN-compatible scanner (or camera, for that matter) is connected, it can be used, regardless of the manufacturer and without installing specific drivers.
However, a version of TWAIN written for Windows 3.1, or Windows XP, or Mac OSX, or Mac OS9, will not function under any other operating system than the one for which it is written. This is why your OS 9 version of TWAIN (which presumably was installed with your OS 9 version of your scanner software) does not yield an image via the Umax software, and why the scanner is not even seen through your OSX-compatible PS7. Consider your own words: "My scanner, a Umax Astra 2200 runs only in OS 9… " What makes you suppose that you can change that behavior by (a) installing OS9-compatible software under OSX, or (b) installing OSX software (PS7) which is looking for an OSX-compatible TWAIN driver?
Try checking the scanner manufacturer’s Web site to see if they have updated OSX TWAIN drivers for your scanner. Or try loading OSX TWAIN drivers from another device. TWAIN is TWAIN, and in theory is backwards-compatible. If you can load TWAIN drivers compatible with OSX, they should be able to see an older device, unless the manufacturers were true idiots and built something into the firmware requiring a specific OS, in which case they were not, and are not, truly TWAIN-compatible.
I have a six-year-old Mustek 600 SPI scanner originally installed under Windows 95. It works hunky-dunky under Windows XP, even though (or maybe because) I have never installed the drivers under XP. Perhaps if I tried to install the original software, with its TWAIN drivers (presuming that Windows didn’t say, "Nah, baby, nah. Can’t do dat," which it probably would), the scanner would break. Don’t know, and won’t know, because I’m not idiot enough to install software written for an OS which is not demonstrably compatible with the OS I am running.
Cheers,
Scott
