Re: Getting around the firewire problem was Re: filmscanners: Best film scanner, period!!!

[Arthur Entlich <artistic@ampsc.com>]

Moreno Polloni wrote:
> 
> > Not true in this case.  Nikon simply decided to drop SCSI and Windows NT
> support
> > for their newer scanners.  This was a marketing decision, not a technical
> > decision, and no technical advantage accrues from it.
> 
> That's not true. How about plug and play? That's something that SCSI is not.
> And firewire, unlike SCSI, doesn't require your devices to be powered on at
> boot time.
> 

I certainly have no direct link to Nikon's thought processes, but I
suspect they had a number of reasons for dumping SCSI.  For one, it is
an evolutionary process.  The Firewire protocol is being pushed as the
new industry standard.  It does remove a good deal of the difficulty
inherent in SCSI, from cabling problems due to continually changing
interfacing, to confusion about termination, to many different type of
SCSI floating around, not fully compatible with one another, etc.  SCSI
remains a difficult interface to understand and implement.  Now that
relatively cheap firewire chips have become available manufacturers are
encouraged to use them.

Having two protocols in the unit might have led to some code conflicts,
hardware conflicts and certainly a lot more expense in costs of parts
and software engineering. 

However, I do think MS has more responsibility to keep their older OSs
upgraded to new protocols than they do.  Often they release software
with promises of interfacing functioning but it is only a partial
protocol.  They did this with USB and WIN95 OS 2.0R.  My CD states right
on it "USB support" and yet it was relatively dysfunctional.  In fact,
the Minolta Dimage II USB scanner claims it only works on Win 98 and
above.  In other words, I feel that MS should make Firewire available to
older OSs, at limited or no cost to the license owner.

How often do we actually get what MS promises in an OS, and then we get
charged more to get the product "fixed" (they call it an upgrade).

I do think manufacturers tend to drop protocols like hot potatoes as
soon as a new one comes along, and this is unfair, because it rarely
leaves an upgrade path other than replacing one's system. It has made me
not to quick to adopt new designs, and I tend to, as a result, buy last
year's models once some type of track record has begun to develop.

If Nikon saw a great demand for their older product while people were
ignoring their newer one, they would probably reconsider.

I think Epson saw an unusual demand for their "obsolete" printers which
didn't require the chipped cartridge, once the chipped based machines
hit the street.  Interestingly some of their new printers do not have
the chip circuitry.  I noticed the 880 and I believe the 980 appeared
without the chipped cart. 

Art