Power Outage
I’d intended to have a new cartoon up today, but a power outage knocked my scanner out of commission. This has happened before–any disruption of the scanner’s power supply causes whatever captures the image to stop functioning for a seemingly random amount of time, so while it’ll still move up and down the flatbed, it returns a blank image in all my scan software.
I’m already pretty certain it’s a hardware problem, but I don’t have enough money to replace it, and since printer/scanner companies usually provide terrible support documents, I’ve had to settle for just waiting for the scanner to start working again, whenever this happens.
Up to now, leaving it unplugged for a few hours usually does the trick, though I’ve occasionally gotten it back online in a matter of minutes, and sometimes it’s taken days.
It’s an Epson Perfection 1670–pretty old, but unfortunately what I’m stuck with for now. If you have any suggestions about how I might fix this, please comment. Otherwise, it’ll most likely be another day or two until I have a new cartoon online.
5 Responses to “Power Outage”
Have you tried cleaning the cable contacts with electrical contact cleaner? Some use alcohol or WD-40.
It sounds too simple, but appears to have solved the same problem for others.
You might be able to do scanning at a FedEx / Kinko’s type place. Maybe not as convenient as having a scanner at home, but may be cheaper / better in the long run.
Good luck!
I have a scanner that I’m not using. It’s yours if you want it.
Have you tried cleaning the cable contacts with electrical contact cleaner? Some use alcohol or WD-40.
It sounds too simple, but appears to have solved the same problem for others.
I did that the first time this issue cropped up. It worked at the time, though not permanently, and it’s difficult to say whether it was more or less effective than what I’ve done since.
I have a scanner that I’m not using. It’s yours if you want it.
Really? I’ll email you about it.
Bear in mind I have too little money right now to even pay for shipping for stuff like that. I’m really freaking broke.
Wow! Do NOT use WD40!! WD40 stands for “Water Displacement Formula 40” and was designed for drilling oil as a way of removing water from the specialy formated drilling mud. WD40 breaks down under heat into a gooey, gluey de-polymerized sludge.
Ethyl alcohol works, but anything with 1,1,1 Trichlortrifluro in it is superior. It WILL eat your fingers if you leave it in contact too long. Perhaps you should stick with Ethyl. You can get the Trichloro spray at Radio Shack.
If you reboot your computer, that will usually re-initialize everything and should be fast way to reset the scanner.
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