“Scanner Did Not Send File”
Friday night, I decided to mount an extra Hitachi hard disk in my PC. Once that was done and while I had the case open, I decided to replace the PC's network and USB 2.0 cards with a USB 2.0/Firewire 400/Ethernet combo card sitting in my closet. The combo card went in without a problem; and, to my delight and surprise, Windows XP did not demand I re-activate it. Installing the card's drivers was a two step process that took a little extra time but otherwise went without a hitch.
The real test of the new card would be whether it would work with my little USB 2.0 network. For those who have not read previous blogs, the network consists of a Belkin USB 2.0 switch connected to a Belkin USB 2.0 four port hub. The switch allows me to connect my Mirror Door Dual 1.25 G4 PowerMac, my Dual 1 Ghz Quicksilver PowerMac, my 1 Ghz 12” PowerBook, and my AMD XP 2800+ powered Windows XP PC to my Epson 166o Photo Scanner, an HP Business Inkjet 1100D printer, a HP PhotoSmart 7150 photo printer, and a Zip Drive.
The Macs have always worked almost flawlessly with this setup, even though the Belkin stuff never said it supported Macs. The Windows XP machine has been the cranky one of my computer pack, and I was anxious it might start throwing me “scanner did not send file” error messages seen when setting the network up.
Sure enough, it did!
If you do a search on Google for this problem, you’ll find it’s fairly common with some Epson scanners. You might see this message anytime you hooked one up via a USB hub. Obviously, that wasn’t my problem since the scanner had been working through the hub just fine.
I was NOT going to put the old USB 2.0 card back in! (I will not be defeated by this PC!) I was suspicious that the problem might lie elsewhere in my network since the new combo card was from the same manufacturer and used the same USB 2.0 chipset as the old one. So, I played with the USB related BIOS settings in the PC. During that process, I shut down my Quicksilver PowerMac which had been playing music using iTunes.
When I then tried scanning an image with the XP machine, it worked perfectly.
The tumblers in the old brain crashed together and I realized that the problem wasn’t where I had thought it was. I had thought there were conflicts between the PC motherboard’s USB implementation and the USB 2.0 card’s. Now, I was suspicious the USB switch was not isolating the machines from each other, and an “on-network” Mac was causing some kind of signal or timing error that prevented the XP machine from getting a clean signal from the scanner (or sending one to it). I performed several tests with the QuickSilver powered up and down; and during every one in which it was powered on, the scan would fail.
I doubt if very many people are running a USB network like I am, so knowing that probably won’t help anyone else but me. But, at least, I now understand what the true cause of the problem is. The workaround is very simple. If I need to scan using the Windows PC, I need to make sure the Macs are turned off or, if not, disconnected from the network.
As I was writing this, I powered up the PC (I was already using the QuickSilver) and tested whether scanning using the Mac was similarly affected with the PC online. It is not, and it’s using the same USB 2.0 card as the PC.
That’s why there’s 3 Macs in this office, and one PC.
The real test of the new card would be whether it would work with my little USB 2.0 network. For those who have not read previous blogs, the network consists of a Belkin USB 2.0 switch connected to a Belkin USB 2.0 four port hub. The switch allows me to connect my Mirror Door Dual 1.25 G4 PowerMac, my Dual 1 Ghz Quicksilver PowerMac, my 1 Ghz 12” PowerBook, and my AMD XP 2800+ powered Windows XP PC to my Epson 166o Photo Scanner, an HP Business Inkjet 1100D printer, a HP PhotoSmart 7150 photo printer, and a Zip Drive.
The Macs have always worked almost flawlessly with this setup, even though the Belkin stuff never said it supported Macs. The Windows XP machine has been the cranky one of my computer pack, and I was anxious it might start throwing me “scanner did not send file” error messages seen when setting the network up.
Sure enough, it did!
If you do a search on Google for this problem, you’ll find it’s fairly common with some Epson scanners. You might see this message anytime you hooked one up via a USB hub. Obviously, that wasn’t my problem since the scanner had been working through the hub just fine.
I was NOT going to put the old USB 2.0 card back in! (I will not be defeated by this PC!) I was suspicious that the problem might lie elsewhere in my network since the new combo card was from the same manufacturer and used the same USB 2.0 chipset as the old one. So, I played with the USB related BIOS settings in the PC. During that process, I shut down my Quicksilver PowerMac which had been playing music using iTunes.
When I then tried scanning an image with the XP machine, it worked perfectly.
The tumblers in the old brain crashed together and I realized that the problem wasn’t where I had thought it was. I had thought there were conflicts between the PC motherboard’s USB implementation and the USB 2.0 card’s. Now, I was suspicious the USB switch was not isolating the machines from each other, and an “on-network” Mac was causing some kind of signal or timing error that prevented the XP machine from getting a clean signal from the scanner (or sending one to it). I performed several tests with the QuickSilver powered up and down; and during every one in which it was powered on, the scan would fail.
I doubt if very many people are running a USB network like I am, so knowing that probably won’t help anyone else but me. But, at least, I now understand what the true cause of the problem is. The workaround is very simple. If I need to scan using the Windows PC, I need to make sure the Macs are turned off or, if not, disconnected from the network.
As I was writing this, I powered up the PC (I was already using the QuickSilver) and tested whether scanning using the Mac was similarly affected with the PC online. It is not, and it’s using the same USB 2.0 card as the PC.
That’s why there’s 3 Macs in this office, and one PC.
posted by Andy Foster at
2:36 PM
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