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Re: [LUG] Scanner access not easy



Tony Atkin wrote:

In an ideal world USB cable would extend as far as you need and you would
be able to run the connections back from scanners to server.  But as 5
metres seems to be the limit, the only way to do this would be with some
sort of  extension device (usb -> cat5 -> usb).

USB allows 4 hubs I think, so 5 x 4.8 meters is your limit.

You can get "active cables", where the hubs are alledgedly built
into the cable, which are just under 25 meters.

They weren't too expensive when I last looked, but we figured
out how to solve that one over 100Mbps ethernet, so I never
bought one to try.

My uneducated guess is
that this might turn out to be just as costly as buying hp network
scanners.  A cheap but unelegant solution would be to rescue some
redundent low-end pc's, set them up with suitable interface cards and run
them as scanner servers.

USB cables may be cheaper than a new SCSI adaptor, but I'm sure
you can probably pick up a secondhand SCSI adaptor if your
lucky.

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