Turns out the company that made the scanner was located just a few miles from my home here in Seattle. It was originally released in 1989, but the version I received was produced in July of 1990. In fact the scanner software inside the box, a surprisingly full-featured software package called Touch Up, actually had been registered by a previous owner. As a result they received an upgrade disk, which was still sealed in the box when I got it. The official upgrade disk was dated - I kid you not - March 19, 1995, almost exactly 25 years ago.
- The scanner came in a stunningly large box for such a relatively small device.
- Remember how in the early 1990s the US used to label all kinds of hardware as non-exportable? Like, we didn't want our enemies to use certain tech. IIRC, this included certain computers and even game consoles. Apparently hand scanners were added to the list!
In order to use the scanner you have to plug a very bizarre device called a "cartridge interface" into your parallel port. The device was originally designed for the 500/2000, so when I tried to plug it into my A3000 it was mis-aligned by a few millimeters vertically.
- So close!
As a result I had to buy a freaking parallel cable! I feel like I couldn't give those damn things away 10 years ago, and lo and behold now I needed one. Oh well. Eight bucks later, one arrived one my doorstep.
The cartridge interface has 3 ports. One connects to the parallel port, another into the hand scanner's cable, and a 3rd for its own power supply.
- Don't you just miss piles of criss-crossing wires all over your desk?
Once you get that all set up, it's time to quickly install Touch Up to your Amiga's hard drive. All you have to do is simply drag and drop a folder from the floppy to your drive, voila! Next you want to get familiar with the switches and buttons on the hand scanner. There are only a few so it's pretty quick.
- As seen on the left side of the scanner. "Letter' would be if you wanted to scan documents. This was kind of like the home computer version of faxing, or quick and dirty duplicates of receipts and whatnot. "Photo" can get you much finer detail grayscale images with very interesting dithering options.
- This was the first scan I did after fiddling with the scanner and software settings for a while.
- YOu can see the scanner on top of the SSI Gold Box D&D game in the foreground, and her face on the A3000's screen. It really blows things up at the resolution I'm at right now (300dpi).
keep a steady hand as she goes