How much RAM for medium format (6x6) scanning?

In article t,
says...

I disagree with your paraphrase.

Me too, and I do agree with your comments, but let's face it, the term
driver has come to have many very different meanings, some not so
technically correct but still acceptably used.

Since the 386 days, the CPU protected modes are used (for example by
Windows) to prevent unathorized access to ports or memory. A driver
formally is NOT a program, but is instead very special software written to
conform to Windows specific definitions for driver architecture (as opposed
to the ordinary specifications for programs), to provide this privledged
access to ports or hardware devices, in highly privledged ring 0 level -
privledges not allowed to mere "programs". This is a Real Big Deal, driver
has this very precise special meaning to Windows. MS-Dos didnt care and a
program could access anything, but in protected Windows versions like W2K
or XP, no program can access a port directly - not allowed for the good of
the system. One gets in line and does it orderly via a driver, to prevent
getting a protected port fault.

So that's a driver, technically, specifically conforming to Windows driver
architecture standards, and thus given privledged ring 0 mode to be allowed
to access the ports without CPU fault. A driver is very privledged in
Windows.

But we call programs that simply operate hardware by the name drivers too,
even if not so privledged.

For example, scanner "drivers" dont operate at ring 0, and so instead must
access any ports or devices via a bonefide driver for the port, for example
the USB port driver or Firewire port driver. They send specific command
data to the device, but they must talk to the port driver to do it. To
Windows, these scanner programs are not drivers, nor driver architecture,
they are just GUI Windows programs, a regular exe program that normally
accesses its own twain module to do the work. However, sometimes it knows a
few special proprietary things that the twain specification doesnt know.

The Twain "driver" is not a driver either, it is just a common interface
providing simple standard commands for complex operations in specialized
hardware. Basically the twain .ds file is only a dll file in a known
location with known interface. Photoshop for example doesnt know how to
operate any scanner, but it does know how to talk to to the twain
interface, which is then passed to the scanner "driver", which then
understands the specific and complex hardware. The only real driver
(Windows architecture wise) is the Windows USB port driver (for example)
to actually access the hardware port without protection fault. However
scanner twain modules do know how to operate the specific hardware device
they support, and this knowledge is necessary for any other program to
operate the scanner.

I'd call these drivers too, we require them to operate the hardware, but
they are just programs, and not of Windows driver architecture like real
drivers. It would be good if we had a different term, Handler perhaps, to
differentiate it from a real driver (but the user couldnt care less what it
is called - they are all drivers).

And terminology has become even more lax, for example modems used in
Windows now must provide a Windows INF file that describes the modems
properties, init strings, etc. (this is real good too, users no longer need
to know about init strings). Some of us have even come to call these INF
files by the name "modem driver" too, but it is not even code, it is only a
list of structured data, and technically it is an INF file. The real
driver is the serial port driver, part of Windows.

So generally to the user, the term driver has just come to mean the file
you must load for Windows to use the device. Often it is not a real
driver, but this doesnt really matter to us, we still must have it to use
the device.

--
Wayne
http://www.scantips.com "A few scanning tips"

RSD99 wrote:

"Neil Gould" wrote:
"...
the functionality of the peripheral device is determined by the driver,
not the application (program).
..."

You are using an interesting, and incorrect, definition of "driver" here.

According to "The Jargon Lexicon," (aka "The Jargon File") the definition
of Driver is: In `device driver', code designed to handle a particular
peripheral device such as a magnetic disk or tape unit. (Second of three
contexts)



But in these examples the driver is a generic one that all such devices must
meet the same interface specs to work. You can swap out a HD for a HD and
no driver change is needed. With a scanner, try unplugging a umax scanner
and plug in a cannon and see if it still works with the same driver!
--

Stacey

RSD99 wrote:

Agree with that ...

There are good drivers, and there are bad drivers ...


IMHO the windows drivers that came with my scanner are 'bad' and the linux
drivers for the same scanner are good! ;-)

In my case the windows drivers have noticable banding while the linux
drivers don't. All I can say, since I don't write hardware drivers, is it
works better in linux than it does in windows and the only thing I can see
that's different is the 'drivers'.

--

Stacey

Wayne Fulton wrote:


So generally to the user, the term driver has just come to mean the file
you must load for Windows to use the device. Often it is not a real
driver, but this doesnt really matter to us, we still must have it to use
the device.


Maybe what I've run into is the part of the "driver" that adjusts the
information recieved from the scanner into the actual image. If the
"drivers" or whatever you call the software that controls the scanner made
no difference, software like -viewscan- wouldn't be popular. Whoever wrote
the software that controls my scanner in linux was more on the ball than
the people at umax were!

--

Stacey

Stacey writes:

IMHO the windows drivers that came with my scanner are 'bad' and the linux
drivers for the same scanner are good! ;-)

A good general rule in computerland is that manufacturers of good
hardware usually write poor drivers, and manufacturers of good software
usually build poor hardware. It's very rare to get both from the same
vendor.

If the Linux drivers work better, it's probably because they were
written by software engineers who knew how the hardware interface
worked, not hardware engineers who learned a bit of programming.

--
Transpose hotmail and mxsmanic in my e-mail address to reach me directly.

Stacey wrote:

Wayne Fulton wrote:


So generally to the user, the term driver has just come to mean the file
you must load for Windows to use the device. Often it is not a real
driver, but this doesnt really matter to us, we still must have it to use
the device.


Maybe what I've run into is the part of the "driver" that adjusts the
information recieved from the scanner into the actual image. If the
"drivers" or whatever you call the software that controls the scanner made
no difference, software like -viewscan- wouldn't be popular. Whoever wrote
the software that controls my scanner in linux was more on the ball than
the people at umax were!

Interpreting the semantics of the data isn't part of the driver. Or at
least it wasn't when the word driver was popularised in software
engineering. For example, interpreting colours using ICC profiles is
part of the image processing application.

Nowadays there is the new buzzword 'middleware' for ambiguous pieces of
code...

-- Lassi

In article , Lassi
=?iso-8859-1?Q?Hippel=E4inen?=
wrote:

[...]

Nowadays there is the new buzzword 'middleware' for ambiguous pieces of
code...

I work with a couple middlewares. They walk funny.

Mxsmanic wrote:

Stacey writes:

IMHO the windows drivers that came with my scanner are 'bad' and the
linux drivers for the same scanner are good! ;-)

A good general rule in computerland is that manufacturers of good
hardware usually write poor drivers, and manufacturers of good software
usually build poor hardware. It's very rare to get both from the same
vendor.

If the Linux drivers work better, it's probably because they were
written by software engineers who knew how the hardware interface
worked, not hardware engineers who learned a bit of programming.


Irregardless of the semantics or reasoning, the scanner works better with
one -software set- than the other. Your statement about "It's the same
scanner, so the quality of the scans will be the same." isn't correct as
different software (like viewscan) can give different results from the OE
scanning app on the same scanner even in the same OS. Change the OS (and
all the code to interface with the device) and the performance can easily
be better or worse.

Another example of this is while the scanner works better in linux, my
canon printer works -much- better for photo printing in windows with the OE
canon drivers, my epson printer seems about the same either way.
--

Stacey

In article ,
Stacey wrote:

Another example of this is while the scanner works better in linux, my
canon printer works -much- better for photo printing in windows with the OE
canon drivers, my epson printer seems about the same either way.

Why not just get a Mac, then everything would work great!!!! With one machine :-)

posted:
"Why not just get a Mac ..."

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