Railfan Technology > Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 with Mac OSX....help!

Are any readers here running a Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 with Mac Panther. Santa brought me a Coolscan and I attached it to my Mac G4 desktop with Panther OS per the instructions using their proprietary Nikon Scan softward. Lotsa problems. When it works, it works great, but it often goes into various error modes. Everytime I think I have it figured out, a new error message crops up.
Curious if anyone out here in cyber land has any advice.

The Coolscan is the eventual replacement for my Polaroid Sprintscan 4000 that I have been using for about six years. Two comments. One, assuming I can get the Coolscan working reliably, it is a great machine. The dual sensors really decrease scanning time, although in a lot of situations nowhere near as fast as Nikon claims. Two, in comparing scans from both machines, the old Polaroid looks to be about as good as the Nikon, albeit very slow. The problem, and this is one of the things I hate about today's throw away hardware, is the Polaroid has dust on the sensor and it was not designed to be cleaned. I have heard of ways to clean the sensor, but it involves far more work than I feel technically capable of....and to pay someone to do it is about as expensive as replacing it. Plus I get a USB2 machine instead of an ancient technology SCSI machine.

Any advice will be appreciated.

John West

John,

Which CPU do you have Panther running on and what is the scanner plugged in to? Is it a built-in USB 2.0 port or and add-in card? If built-in, make sure you aren't using a hub. Plug it straight into the port on the CPU. If it's an aftermarket card, these often fail. Try a different port or a new card, even a USB 1.1 port just for the sake of troublehooting.

Above all, boot from your install CD or DVD and launch Disk Utility and repair permissions.

Mike

Thanks for the response. My Mac is fairly old. The CPU is 733MHz and only supports USB 1.1.

John

John,

The processor shouldn't be a problem. Sorry, by CPU, I meant which machine (G3 or G4 tower, PowerBook, iMac, MacMini, etc.?)

I don't know what the problem is. I don't use a Nikon scanner any longer but I do have several Macs. My Minolta scanner always had fussy USB problems and never worked well on USB 1.1. I finally put a good quality USB 2.0 PCI card in it and it has worked great ever since. But you can only upgrade the USB in computers that support PCI, PCIx or PCMCIA cards.

A few suggestions...

1. Do the boot from CD > Disk Utility > Repair Permissions thing I mentioned earlier. That often takes care of a lot of weird intermittent problems especially after a software install.

2. Make sure you are running the final version of Panther, which is 10.3.9.

3. Make sure you are using the latest version of NikonScan which is 4.0.2 for Mac OSX. You can download the 4.0 to 4.0.2 updater here http://support.nikontech.com/
Always do the Repair Permissions process as described above (booting from your install CD) after any software or system install or update.

4. If problems persists, you can further troubleshoot the source of the problem two ways.

a) Create a new user account by going to System Preferences > Accounts > then click on the "+" sign and create a new account with a new name and make sure you give it ADMIN privileges. Log out of your regular account then log in on the new one and try the scanner. If it works now, the problem is some sort of preference file or plist file conflict unique to your normal user account. If the problem persists, try the next step.

b) Download Hamrick's VueScan trail software here: http://www.hamrick.com
The trail download is free and this scanner software is very stable and functional when other scanner driver software isn't. Make a trial scan and see if it works. If so, it's not hardware but the NikonScan software or some sort of underlying conflict with it. If the problem persists, I'd look at a hardware issue, probably USB related. I strongly suggest a USB 2.0 upgrade if your machine supports it. Problems aside, it is MUCH faster during the scanning process than trying to do it over USB 1.1

Let me know if any of this works.

Mike

Mike,

Very much appreciate your interest and help. Unfortunately I am too much of a technodinosaur to understand the "boot from CD" procedure. The interesting thing I have found is that the scanner and software works perfectly with the film strip adapter, but not with the mounted slide adapter. By scanning a few film strips and then switching adapters, I got the slide adapter to work flawlessly for a bunch of scans. But when I finished, turned stuff off, and later came back to restart, the problems with the slide adapter resumed. I've tried reinstalling Nikon Scan and that has not solved the problem. What I am planning to do now is download the Vuescan and see how it works. I've heard a lot of good things about Vuescan that it is probably worth a try just to see if I prefer it. It might even work with my old Polaroid scanner (which is a good maching, just slow and has accumulated some dust on the sensor).

Again thanks.

John

Scanner works fine with Vuescan! Interestingly, both my old Polaroid Sprintscan and the new Nikon unit work well with Vuescan. I will probably go with Vuescan, but it irritates me that Nikon is providing buggy software to support their machine.

John

John,

Glad it's working. I don't know why but for some reason the slide scanner manufacturers can't seem to make truly functional software. I read about similar issues time and time again from different slide scanner owners on both Windows and Mac OS.

VueScan has a bit of a convoluted interface but it has solved a lot of my scanner issues in the past and now I prefer it for its advanced features over anything else I've tried. You just have to get used to the clunky interface and jargon. Since the 5000ED has an infrared channel, I recommend the Pro version of VueScan. Once you get used to it and start getting better at scanning, you'll find the pro features worth the extra cost, especially the infrared channel in the RAW format files.

As far as the Mac, every OS X user should become familiar with Repairing Permissions as it's the first defense when things start to get weird. I do it about once a month and before and after every OS update and after any software install. The process is described in detail here: http://kb.wisc.edu/helpdesk/page.php?id=3810

Cheers!

Mike

First off I want to thank the folks here (and at Railpix Forums), as well as back channel, who took the time to help me.

It looks to me as if Vuescan is the solution. And thanks to the several folks who recommended the pro version. When I mentioned $39 I had not gotten past clicking "no" on the initial "do you want to buy" screen, since I was busy testing out the free version on my two scanners. I will undoubtedly end up with the pro version. There are still a few things I need to understand better to use it correctly but it seems to work perfectly on both my scanners.

I guess the poor old Nikon programers have their hands full what with the compatibility difficulties with Vista combined with Apple's introduction of the Intel processors. And the fact I was forcing it to run on USB 1.1 on my old machine probably didn't help. It is also interesting that Ed Hamrick can keep up with all that while Nikon can't. If the pro version of Vuescan is a ticket to regular updates, that alone is makes it worth it since this technology changes so rapidly.

One of the things I find very interesting about Vuescan is my old Polaroid runs much faster on it than it did on the proprietary software. The Polaroid is actually faster than the Nikon (despite the Super Coolscan dual sensor), but that is not a fair comparison because the Nikon is running digital ICE which the Polaroid did not have.

Again, thanks for the help. Now all I need is a dustcover, and I can get back to scanning those 40 year old slides.

John West

Final report. Shipped the Coolscan back to Adorama today. Adorama has been good about returns in the past, and hopefully will be here as well. After discussions with the Adorama and Nikon tech reps, their conclusion was there was some kind of defect in either the slide adapter, or the adapter's interface with the scanner. No point in paying that kind of money for a broken machine.

But the experience has not been all bad. Vuescan was a nice discovery, and may help extend the life of my old Polaroid Sprintscan. Got some nice scans this morning from the Polaroid and Vuescan. But I'm probably still stuck with the dust on sensor halo problems.

Secondly, I can see the advantages of the Coolscan. It's a cool machine. The scans when I could get them really were crisp, and I got quickly spoiled by ICE. But clearly until I upgrade to a CPU that supports USB 2.0, the speed advantage of the dual sensor is lost. So maybe the slower non-super Coolscan at half the price is better for me. We'll see.

Anyway, again thanks for for the help here, at RP, and back channel. I've learned a lot.

John West

John,

While it's a bit late now, the G4 733 (Quick Silver for us certified Apple folk) will support a USB 2.0 PCI card. The card is about $20 at any big box store that sells electronics and can be installed in less than 5 minutes. With 10.3.x, and the card you should be set.


Regards,
Tom


jbwest Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> quickly spoiled by ICE. But clearly until I
> upgrade to a CPU that supports USB 2.0, the speed
> advantage of the dual sensor is lost. So maybe the
> slower non-super Coolscan at half the price is
> better for me. We'll see.

> John West

Thanks Tom, been thinking of that. Will the PCI upgrade run on the G4 733 without the sleep problems and other issues that I read about in the discussion groups? Some folks swear by some brands of PCI cards, others say avoid the same cards like the plague. Tough for a technodinosaur like me to get a clear picture. I put a SCSI card in, so presumably putting a USB 2.0 card in would be just as easy....if it will work reliably. I'm spoiled because my existing system has been so stable for so long with minimal problems.

John

John,

I just bought and installed this SIIG Firewire/USB 2.0 combo card for my Dual 1.25GHz G4. It isn't the cheapest card on the market but it gave me Firewire 800 and a stable USB 2.0 bus, something I've had problems with in the past with cheaper USB cards.

Super easy install. Just pop it into a vacant PCI slot and off you go. No drivers required with OS X. No wake-from-sleep problems or any other issues.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000IF7ZAA

Sorry to hear the Nikon went back but I'm glad the problem has somewhat been solved.

Mike

Talked my local Mac store (not the official Apple version) and the PCI card seems to be the way to go.

John,

I haven't read too much about the various brands of cards, but have installed a bunch (Sawtooth and QuickSilver machines). None have reported an issue that I have installed them in. Honestly, if you drop the card in the system and the issue develops, remove it and return it. Fortunately this upgrade doesn't cost much up front and most of the stores have good return poilcies when the issue is genuine.


-Tom

This is kind of a mop up post. Got a replacement Super Coolscan and the machine works fine. As suggested above, installed a USB 2 card in my G4 and it works perfectly. The scans really fly with the dual sensor and USB 2 connection.

Tried the Nikon Scan software and it was again buggy, so rather than fight it I just use Vuescan. The upside in all this is I really like Vuescan. It is amazingly adaptable and easy to use. It not only works perfectly with the Coolscan, but it will extend the useful life of my old Polaroid, and I found that it runs the flatbed scanner part of my HP all-in-one machine much better than the HP software.

Again, thanks for the help.

JBW