[vox-tech] Scanner weirdness

[Rod Roark]

I finally got my scanner working with Ubuntu.  It's a
parallel-port Plustek 9636T which is supported by the Sane
backend named plustek_pp:

http://www.sane-project.org/man/sane-plustek_pp.5.html

This backend can operate either in "direct" mode (in user
space), or as a kernel module.  After getting poor results
in direct mode I chose to build the module.  With an awful
lot of trial and error, I have found that it works nicely
with the parallel port in EPP mode (which is recommended)
EXCEPT that:

(1) If I reboot or power down the machine while the
scanner's lamp is turned on, then it no longer works, even
if I power EVERYTHING off and back on again!  There are no
complaints from the software, but the scanner simply does
not respond any more.

(2) I can get it working again by going into the BIOS setup 
and switching the parallel port to SPP mode, changing the
module's configuration to that mode, doing a scan, turning
off the scanner's lamp, and then rebooting and changing it
all back to EPP mode.

How can this be?  The only thing I can imagine is that it
has something to do with the stepper motor position inside
the scanner - where else might state information be
preserved after a power-off?

In case you are wondering, I don't want to stay in SPP mode
because that causes scanning to become very slow.

-- Rod