xmastree
05-27-2007, 04:40 AM
My dad's scanner was dying. I scrounged one from my sister, an older USB (but seperately powered) one. That one behaved like she said it would, crashing the computer if you scanned anything bigger than a postage stamp. I thought it was memory related, and as this computer is better than hers it might work. It didn't, despite the minimum spec being a 486 with Win 95.
So, I managed to scrounge another, even older, one last week. This one's a Umax Astra 2000, parallel scanner. A proper big, heavy old one.
Didn't work at all, completely dead. :think:
I suspected the PSU, so I tried with the one from my sister's and it worked. :D
Apart from the green stripe down the right hand side of the page. :think:
I squinted at the tube, and it did appear dimmer at one end, like it was starting to fail.
So, "How different can they be?" thinks I. Not different at all it turns out, and I was able to transplant the tube from my sister's into the older one quite easily. The wires and connector were the same, only the little rubber insulators were different. As these were responsible for holding it in place I had to swap them over.
Fired it up again, and it now works perfectly! :banana:
Oh, and the tube is just a standard cold cathode thing, runs from an inverter which runs off the 12V (I think) supply. If you're looking for a cheap (but delicate) case light and have an old scanner, give it a try.
So, I managed to scrounge another, even older, one last week. This one's a Umax Astra 2000, parallel scanner. A proper big, heavy old one.
Didn't work at all, completely dead. :think:
I suspected the PSU, so I tried with the one from my sister's and it worked. :D
Apart from the green stripe down the right hand side of the page. :think:
I squinted at the tube, and it did appear dimmer at one end, like it was starting to fail.
So, "How different can they be?" thinks I. Not different at all it turns out, and I was able to transplant the tube from my sister's into the older one quite easily. The wires and connector were the same, only the little rubber insulators were different. As these were responsible for holding it in place I had to swap them over.
Fired it up again, and it now works perfectly! :banana:
Oh, and the tube is just a standard cold cathode thing, runs from an inverter which runs off the 12V (I think) supply. If you're looking for a cheap (but delicate) case light and have an old scanner, give it a try.