Possible to connect a Coolscan 9000 to a Macbook Pro Retina?

[philipus]

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My so far trusty Mac Pro (early 2008) seems intent on giving up the ghost. It is the second time in half a year (and third time altogether) that it refuses to boot.

 

I am investigating the problem and will have it repaired, but this made me wonder what I would do if/when it finally bites the dust.

 

As a film shooter I scan a lot and currently use a Coolscan 9000. But how would I connect the scanner to my Macbook Pro Retina which only has Thunderbolt and USB.

 

There's a Thunderbolt-Firewire adapter but it only gives FW800, not 400 which the Coolscan uses.

 

Thanks in advance for any ideas.

Philip

[plasticman]

My so far trusty Mac Pro (early 2008) seems intent on giving up the ghost. It is the second time in half a year (and third time altogether) that it refuses to boot.

 

I am investigating the problem and will have it repaired, but this made me wonder what I would do if/when it finally bites the dust.

 

As a film shooter I scan a lot and currently use a Coolscan 9000. But how would I connect the scanner to my Macbook Pro Retina which only has Thunderbolt and USB.

 

There's a Thunderbolt-Firewire adapter but it only gives FW800, not 400 which the Coolscan uses.

 

Thanks in advance for any ideas.

Philip

 

You can simply buy a Firewire800 to 400 cable - I have this setup on my new MBP right now and it works perfectly.

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[philipus]

Stort tack. That's great. I would have expected having to buy some form of 400-800 adapter.

 

cheers

philip

[rob_w]

Hi Philip, I have two 2008 machines, a Macbook Pro and an iMac, both ready to fall over with disk failure. Not unexpected after six years of heavy use. Trying to figure whether to repair them or not. The screens are still great and cosmetically they are fine. I am just worried that after spending several 100 more big ones something else will fail next, e.g. fan or power supply. So will be interested to see what you decide to do with your machine. Come back and tell us!

 

Thanks

[philipus]

Hi Rob

 

I have now diagnosed the problem to a faulty Geforce 8800. Luckily not the logic board or anything more serious.

 

I am currently looking into which card to get. Ideally I'd want a new one with warranty, not necessarily the 8800 but one of the later Mac-approved cards.

 

That said, it is possible to run PC cards provided one has 10.8.4 or later. The hitch is that unless the card has been flashed with an EFI (Mac) ROM one won't have a boot screen though; video only appears once booted. But flashing is of course not approved and, while online reports indicate it is quite safe to do, one runs the risk that future OS updates will mess with the drivers which risks graphics trouble (one of the latest Mavericks updates apparently wrecked things for some flashed cards).

 

If one can live without boot screen (not great on a multi-OS system like mine) then a PC card considerably less expensive than buying the Mac-approved cards (as an example, in Europe I've seen the PC version of the Radeon Sapphire HD7950 for about 160€, but the Mac version costs...520€). On top of this, with a PC card one can get a much more competent card than compatible Mac cards.

 

All this to say that at the moment I am considering options, including getting a PC card and a cheap Mac-approved card in a second slot for boot screen when I need it.

 

I hope your computers are not giving up just yet. But if disk failure is the problem then perhaps replace the disks with new ones and use the computers until something more expensive breaks?

 

Cheers

Philip

[hoppyman]

Hi Philip. Maybe it might be possible to have a basic and cheap PC networked and dedicated just for scanning?

However Nikon hasn't supported their scanner software to work with Windows 7 even although there is a workaround.

Or are you using different third party scanning software like Vuescan or similar?

[jankap]

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Long ago I bought a Heidelberg scanner with an SCSI interface. Suddenly Apple switched from SCSI to Firewire, USB, etc. Firewire seemed to be a winner. So I tried to use the scanner via firewire, but without success. I had to keep my Mac 7200 alive just for the scanner. The Cube came, but the 7200 stayed. MacBooks came, but the 7200 stayed.

 

In the meantime the scanning job had lost its importance, because the customers used internet and email for their pictures instead of sending photos. So my 7200+SCSI scanner transformed into museum pieces.

 

This year I discovered the software VueScan and it worked. Now I am able to scan with an SCSI scanner via an SCSI to Firewire box to a Firewire to USB connector connected to my MacBook.

The negatives of my father from about 1925 on can be saved on electronic media now.

Jan

[rob_w]

I hope your computers are not giving up just yet. But if disk failure is the problem then perhaps replace the disks with new ones and use the computers until something more expensive breaks?

 

Thanks Philip. This is most likely what I will do. Probably not for this forum but I am just taking soundings on how reliable 5+ y.o. machines continue to be. At a cost of, say, $200 per year per machine depreciated from new, the replacements would need to last more than a year for me to break even.

[philipus]

Hi Geoff, long time! Yes I use Vuescan which I like a lot (I do also use Nikon Scan on a separate Snow Leopard installation but Vuescan is my main tool). I do have the new Macbook Pro as a scanning solution should the Mac Pro give up but I would prefer using the latter because all my drives are in that one.

 

Hi Philip. Maybe it might be possible to have a basic and cheap PC networked and dedicated just for scanning?

However Nikon hasn't supported their scanner software to work with Windows 7 even although there is a workaround.

Or are you using different third party scanning software like Vuescan or similar?

 

Hi Jan, that scanner must give you pretty amazing results. I'm glad it works. I have recently scanned my father's slides which brought back great memories of my childhood.

 

This year I discovered the software VueScan and it worked. Now I am able to scan with an SCSI scanner via an SCSI to Firewire box to a Firewire to USB connector connected to my MacBook. The negatives of my father from about 1925 on can be saved on electronic media now.

Jan

 

Hi Rob, I also buy hardware with a view to using it for a long period of time. My last Macbook for instance was the late 2008 (first) unibody Macbook. Easily upgradeable with SSDs, more memory, battery etc. Worked great for a long time. I hope my Mac Pro will continue to work and I definitely hope my Macbook Pro late 2013 will last for several years since I ensured max RAM and good-sized SSD. But time till tell how long that will be.

 

Thanks Philip. This is most likely what I will do. Probably not for this forum but I am just taking soundings on how reliable 5+ y.o. machines continue to be. At a cost of, say, $200 per year per machine depreciated from new, the replacements would need to last more than a year for me to break even.

[juansanmartinr]

Sorry , I need contectar my Nikon Coolscan ED 900 with my Macbook Pro Retina. They have been able to achieve? As I do with Thunderbolt? Merci.

[wlaidlaw]

I am using an Epson V700 film scanner with a Lighting to FW800 and then 800 to 400 lead. It works just fine. 

 

Wilson

[wlaidlaw]

Long ago I bought a Heidelberg scanner with an SCSI interface. Suddenly Apple switched from SCSI to Firewire, USB, etc. Firewire seemed to be a winner. So I tried to use the scanner via firewire, but without success. I had to keep my Mac 7200 alive just for the scanner. The Cube came, but the 7200 stayed. MacBooks came, but the 7200 stayed.

 

In the meantime the scanning job had lost its importance, because the customers used internet and email for their pictures instead of sending photos. So my 7200+SCSI scanner transformed into museum pieces.

 

This year I discovered the software VueScan and it worked. Now I am able to scan with an SCSI scanner via an SCSI to Firewire box to a Firewire to USB connector connected to my MacBook.

The negatives of my father from about 1925 on can be saved on electronic media now.

Jan

You had better luck than I did with my Artixscan 4000. I was trying to use an FW800 to SCSI external converter like you were off my G5 Powermac (my older G4 had an SCSI card, when I bought it). After five minutes, my Artixscan burst into flames. I blame the converter. I then bought an Epson V700 for the UK and a cheaper Canon LIDE 600F for France, where I don't do a lot of film scanning but it was also handy to have a general purpose scanner. Canon have declined to update the driver for El Capitan, so the LIDE 600F, only about three years old is useless. I am having similar problems with the Canon Pixma Pro-1 printer I have in the UK. I am going to stop buying Canon products all together, as they seem anti Mac. 

 

Wilson

[ramarren]

The Thunderbolt to FW800 adapter, with FW800 to FW400 adapter added, runs the Nikon SuperCoolscan 9000 on macOS El Capitan version 10.11.x with no problems at all. The only devices that it doesn't work well with are bus-powered devices that draw near the limits of FW power specifications, because Thunderbolt does not have as high an amperage spec as FW800 for power supplied. Nikon 8000 and 9000 scanners are not bus-powered so this is of no concern to their use. 

 

I don't change hardware capriciously, but every four to five years is a good lifespan for today's computing devices. 2008 generation CPUs cannot take advantage of the latest performance capabilities in OS and app development. I'm currently running 2012 system hardware which continues to perform well for the present; I suspect it will be time to upgrade hardware in at most a year or two at this point. Unless you absolutely cannot drive the hardware you need to use with the latest generation hardware, it rarely makes sense to put more than a couple hundred dollars into overhaul and repair to keep systems that are older than 4 to 5 years running. 

 

Of course, if an older system is not displaying any problems and continues to do the job you want, there's no downside to running it as long as it continues to do the job.

Edited June 17, 2016 by ramarren

[wlaidlaw]

I don't change hardware capriciously, but every four to five years is a good lifespan for today's computing devices. 2008 generation CPUs cannot take advantage of the latest performance capabilities in OS and app development. I'm currently running 2012 system hardware which continues to perform well for the present; I suspect it will be time to upgrade hardware in at most a year or two at this point. Unless you absolutely cannot drive the hardware you need to use with the latest generation hardware, it rarely makes sense to put more than a couple hundred dollars into overhaul and repair to keep systems that are older than 4 to 5 years running. 

 

Of course, if an older system is not displaying any problems and continues to do the job you want, there's no downside to running it as long as it continues to do the job.

 

I know exactly what you mean. My wife's mid range 2016 15" rMacBook Pro makes my absolutely top of the line 2012 rMBP seem slow, even though mine nominally has a faster processor. It must be that her 500GB SSD is a lot faster than my 750GB SSD. I wish Apple would put better video cards in their laptops though. Neither the Intel HD 4000 nor the Nvidia GeForce GT650M are much to write home about and you can't run them simultaneously to output to both the onboard screen and an external 4K at the same time. 

 

Wilson