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Jan. 13th, 2014 12:07 amThe good news is the camera shop in York was able to process the film rolls from 1998 and deliver pictures that actually resemble something. They came out kinda grainy and with an under-exposed feel but that's to be expected due to the age. I felt better taking it there because I knew it was going to be tricky.
The bad news is, in order for me to scan them in, I needed a new scanner. More like I've been needing a new scanner for a few years. The one I was using since 2000 had some driver issues, to put it mildly. The company (UMAX) did make drivers for it to work with XP, but they want $15 for a CD-R with a 9MB file. That would almost have been a fair deal 20 years ago. But in an age where web hosting plans offer unlimited storage and bandwidth, and I could download the thing in a matter of seconds, there's no excuse for that. Someone must have felt the same way, because the drivers in question have been uploaded all over the place. So I at least have that option. Except XP isn't going to have any more updates after April, and I haven't really been using that much lately. I also have an HP scanner I picked up at a yard sale back in 2008, which has drivers for XP. How about drivers for Windows 7, which I'm using predominantly? Nope, forget it. I'm aware of something called the SANE project, and I've had varying amounts of success with that in the past, but none of it flies with Windows 7.
The good news is, this is a First World problem with a First World solution (throw money at it), one that I should have implemented a long time ago. The new Canon scanner I bought this week works with everything from Windows 2000 up to Windows 8, as well as supporting all the way back to OSX 10.3 on the Apple side. It also runs entirely off USB, so it's one less power adapter to tangle with. As an added bonus, it comes with an adapter for handling 35mm film strips.
The bad news is, I now have a pair of old scanners that are more than a bit obsolete. The only way I'd still need the UMAX for anything is if I would need to scan something in such a way that specifically requires a computer running OS9.0.4 or Windows98, which I do not foresee happening. None of my computers have those operating systems anymore.
Anyway.
The bad news is, in order for me to scan them in, I needed a new scanner. More like I've been needing a new scanner for a few years. The one I was using since 2000 had some driver issues, to put it mildly. The company (UMAX) did make drivers for it to work with XP, but they want $15 for a CD-R with a 9MB file. That would almost have been a fair deal 20 years ago. But in an age where web hosting plans offer unlimited storage and bandwidth, and I could download the thing in a matter of seconds, there's no excuse for that. Someone must have felt the same way, because the drivers in question have been uploaded all over the place. So I at least have that option. Except XP isn't going to have any more updates after April, and I haven't really been using that much lately. I also have an HP scanner I picked up at a yard sale back in 2008, which has drivers for XP. How about drivers for Windows 7, which I'm using predominantly? Nope, forget it. I'm aware of something called the SANE project, and I've had varying amounts of success with that in the past, but none of it flies with Windows 7.
The good news is, this is a First World problem with a First World solution (throw money at it), one that I should have implemented a long time ago. The new Canon scanner I bought this week works with everything from Windows 2000 up to Windows 8, as well as supporting all the way back to OSX 10.3 on the Apple side. It also runs entirely off USB, so it's one less power adapter to tangle with. As an added bonus, it comes with an adapter for handling 35mm film strips.
The bad news is, I now have a pair of old scanners that are more than a bit obsolete. The only way I'd still need the UMAX for anything is if I would need to scan something in such a way that specifically requires a computer running OS9.0.4 or Windows98, which I do not foresee happening. None of my computers have those operating systems anymore.
Anyway.
