Running a Nikon Coolscan USB scanner on Windows 10

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I'm interested in the different methods (and successes and failures) that people have found in achieving the above.

I won't be surprised if most people say that they used Vuescan, and suspect that Silverfast is a minority taste, though the SE version is sophisticated and fairly cheap.

But is anyone using Nikonscan 4?
 
I haven’t used Nikonscan since they stopped supporting any OS changes. Tried Silverfast as it came with an Epson I bought and hated it, was also less than impressed when I discovered I’d have to buy a copy for each scanner I had, bunch of robbing bastards. So I went for Vuescan, it’s not perfect by any means but it works for me, it’s constantly being updated at no extra cost to me and I can use it with all my scanners. Money well spent imho.
 
I've used Vuescan Pro for years now, with at least 3 different Epson flatbeds (inc V700) and a couple of Minolta film scanners. It's also been happy to work with Windows XP, 7, 8 & 10 by just plugging in and switching on.
 
Hi ,

I like Silverfast very much!

...........but in answer to your question I have run an old Epson flatbed scanner on Windows 10. To install it I had to disable driver signing in the Windows 10 OS and just make a slight adjustment in wordpad to the driver description for the scanner; all simple stuff to be honest and I'm sure the coolscan will be the same.
 
Thanks so far. My own findings have been that Nikonscan tends to produce decent colour neg scans straight out of the tin with little fiddling about, and I haven't found the same with Silverfast or Vuescan.

Having used Nikonscan since about 2001, it's interface is very familiar and this also gives me a bias towards it.
 
If the problem is that the software won't run on Windows 10 (rather than requiring a SCSI interface for the scanner, as would be needed for my Nikon scanner) then you could try running a virtual machine under Win10. I use VirtualBox to run Windows 7; Microsoft provide free virtual machines for a number of their older operating systems that will work. (I've also run XP and OS/2.)
 
... you could try running a virtual machine under Win10. I use VirtualBox to run Windows 7 ...
Interesting, Stephen, thanks.

I've been through various travails with legacy 35mm film scanners including at first a scsi model. As an aside, I think that if anything is missing from the current market it's an affordable mf film scanner. But that's another story.

Rather than looking for help, I started this thread as a survey, since there are several routes to the same end, and some are easier to implement than others.

And I instanced Coolscan V, but assume that issues are the same across the whole (and most recent) Nikon USB scanner range (earlier models were scsi and firewire).
 
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Thanks so far. My own findings have been that Nikonscan tends to produce decent colour neg scans straight out of the tin with little fiddling about, and I haven't found the same with Silverfast or Vuescan.

Having used Nikonscan since about 2001, it's interface is very familiar and this also gives me a bias towards it.

Have you used a colour calibration on the scanner for use with silverfast? It really helps.
 
Have you used a colour calibration on the scanner for use with silverfast?
No. That's something else to look into. But I'm very happy with Nikonscan so I might not get round to it. But thanks. Something for the back burner.
 
Both my old Epson flatbeds packed up so dumped them - then a Camera Club member gave me a NIKON Coolscan III LS-30 model S/N : 259615 I can see two SCSI plugs on it but he gave up tryinh to get it to work as there is a huge 'Scart Type' plug which does not fit my HP envy m6 computer or run with Windows 10 -- I DO have Vuescan Pro though. Any help how i can get it to work ? He gave me several 'adapters' as well.
Nikon Scanner.JPG
 
Looks rather like the Coolscan we have, which only worked with SCSI. I might have a couple of SCSI cards if your computer has a slot to put one in; I also have part of a PCMCIA SCSI card (i.e. the card I can find, the cable to connect a SCSI device to it I can't) but this is more academic since laptops haven't had PCMCIA slots for almost longer than I can remember. If you want to try the SCSI card route, if I can find one of my Adaptec cards you can have it.

For what it's worth, I decided against expending effort on it after I'd checked the scans from it and decided I preferred the results from my Epson V700.
 
Any help how i can get it to work ?
I strongly suspect that those adapter plugs will be a no-no. I also believe that the Nikon scsi scanners were picky about which scsi cards they would run on, but Stephen's offer of an Adaptec card sounds promising. The scsi lead pictured on the scanner should plug straight into the card. The card will likely need an old-fashioned pci slot on the mainboard.

The first hurdle is to have Windows recognise the card, and I believe that this is possible and even might be easy. From what I remember of scsi, as the computer fires up you can access a scsi bios window with certain options. Then you should be up and running because Vuescan should provide the scanner driver.

The scanner should give a genuine 2700ppi output, which is pretty decent.
 
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The only gotcha I can see - assuming the obvious ones of getting the drivers for the card and having a card slot - is the pesky matter of SCSI termination. SCSI devices are daisy chained - and the chain needs a terminator at each end. Normally, you set the SCSI card to be terminated (a jumper on the card I suspect) but the device chain needs a terminator as well. My Coolscan came with a big terminator to plug into one of the two SCSI slots on the back of the scanner, in case the scanner was the last in the chain. I couldn't spot anything like my terminator in Pete's photo.
 
I've just checked the Nikon site for the specs of the LS-30, and it seems to be SCSI only. The good news is that the terminator is built in, and turned on or off via a switch.

I did do some searching for anything like a USB/SCSI adaptor, and they do exist; I then recalled why I decided not to take that route, as they cost about £300.
 
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I did do some searching for anything like a USB/SCSI adaptor, and they do exist; I then recalled why I decided not to tale that route, as they cost about £300.
Neither are they guaranteed to work for any given application - a fool's errand, I think. My motto would be to use scsi for scsi, firewire for firewire, and usb for usb. Life's tough enough already.
 
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And memory tells me that a scsi scanner (unlike a usb one) has to be switched on before computer start-up, for its presence to register.
 
I have kept an old Dell Precision laptop running XP with a dock which has a SCSI adapter in it to run a Minolta ScanDual film scanner. The scanner worked overtime last year scanning all my wife's APS negatives which are now happily displayed in a slideshow on a digital photo frame. I still have 20+ years worth of 35mm slides to scan......
 
Years ago I had a Coolscan III and tried to get that to function with a SCSI adapter to my laptop but with no success, if you want to use it I would suggest picking up an old desktop computer and keeping that as a dedicated machine for your scanning needs, certainly a cheaper option than the £300 USB/SCSI that Stephen mentioned.
 
Years ago I had a Coolscan III and tried to get that to function with a SCSI adapter to my laptop but with no success
I think Nikon advised that operation required particular scsi cards (made by Adaptec) ...
I would suggest picking up an old desktop computer and keeping that as a dedicated machine for your scanning needs
A valid route if you have the house-room ...

On the other hand, if your current pc has a pci card slot and you have the right scsi card (which is surely necessary in any case?), then an older machine should be unnecessary since Vuescan will run the scanner (provide the driver) on a modern OS like W10.

I dislike the Vuescan interface and prefer Silverfast, and prefer Nikonscan above either. In Peter's case for the LS-30, Silverfast SE v6.6 would fit the bill at about £50 - but he already has Vuescan. If you had to buy Vuescan, it's now about £60.
 
... an older machine should be unnecessary since Vuescan will run the scanner (provide the driver) on a modern OS like W10.

Slightly OT, but related to the sentence above... I have a Plustek 7500i, and use Vuescan Pro. However, I have to use the 32-bit version; when I try to use the 64-bit version, Vuescan can't see the scanner. Ed Hamrick told me this is because the 7500i has a 32-bit driver, and I'm finding that a bit hard to square with droj's comment above.

The problem for me is I'm now on MacOS Mojave (10.14), which is the last version that will run 32-bit software. So it looks like I'll have to stick with Mojave if I want to use my scanner. This might be OK for a while, although over the past weekend I had to upgrade from High Sierra to Mojave in order to get a version of iTunes that was compatible with my iPhone in order to do a restore on the phone (long story not worth going into here). I'm worried something like this might happen again to force an upgrade in the future... :(
 
I just had a quick look at options for Mac. It seems that you can run VirtualBox on a Mac, and that should let you run a 32 bit version of Windows to use the scanner. But I've never touched a Mac, so there may be well known problems that I don't know about. A virtual machine has drawbacks, but I'm running one out of necessity for one piece of software.
 
It's hard to understand all the ins & outs. W10 64-bit certainly seems pretty forgiving of and runs legacy apps that are 32-bit, and this includes Nikonscan, but maybe drivers are another matter?

Whilst Nikonscan 4 runs very smoothly on my 64-bit Win 10 pc, it seems that the driver it uses (as noted in Device Manager) is from a previous installation of Silverfast SE8.

Maybe I got lucky?
 
It's hard to understand all the ins & outs. W10 64-bit certainly seems pretty forgiving of and runs legacy apps that are 32-bit, and this includes Nikonscan, but maybe drivers are another matter?

Whilst Nikonscan 4 runs very smoothly on my 64-bit Win 10 pc, it seems that the driver it uses (as noted in Device Manager) is from a previous installation of Silverfast SE8.

Maybe I got lucky?

When I asked Plustek if they would update the drivers for 64-bit, they replied "Driver to Mac OS X is automatically being installed by SilverFast and not available for separate installation. Therefore we don't release any driver download." I did wonder at the time whether getting a trial version of SF 8 (I have a useless licence for SE 6) might install an updated driver...
 
(I have a useless licence for SE 6)
Do you mean useless because it won't run on the latest OS? Otherwise ...
And / or might it apply the demo watermarks?
I did wonder at the time whether getting a trial version of SF 8 might install an updated driver...
My SF SE8 is a registered installation for the scanner in question, but I have asked myself the very same question ...
 
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Do you mean useless because it won't run on the latest OS? Otherwise ...
And / or might it apply the demo watermarks?

My SF SE8 is a registered installation for the scaner in question, but I have asked myself the very same question ...

SF6 SE won't run on any MacOS since they stopped supporting emulations of the non-Intel CPUs (PowerPC chips?).

I'm pretty sure if I get a trial SF8 it will apply demo watermarks, the question in my mind is whether it will install a 64-bit version of the driver, and then whether a 64-bit version of Vuescan would use it. I've started getting nervous about that for the very reason you mentioned above...
...Vuescan will run the scanner (provide the driver) on a modern OS like W10.

Ie maybe even if I had a 64-bit driver, Vuescan would still only use its own 32-bit version!
 
WOW !! Great Replies! However much more 'technical ' than I can handle -- on this HP ENVY m6 computer 'taken over' from Daughter I have NO other slot than one for 'Disks' . There are several USB sockets and one like I use with Club Digital Projector but NO other 'Card Slot' . I contacted my mate at Club who gave me the Nikon scanner and various adapters to try to give it back to him. I think i will 'splash out' for an Epson V700 but from searches I found they are 'out of stock' -- does anyone know if it will do Medium Format as well as 35mm and from where can I get one ?
 
The slot is on the motherboard (the big circuit board inside the computer case) rather than anything external...

The V700 has been replaced by the V800, but if you can fnd one it will scan film up to 10x8.

Edit to add: I think all the Epson flatbeds will handle 35mm and 120 but only some will cope with 5x4 and above.
 
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maybe even if I had a 64-bit driver, Vuescan would still only use its own 32-bit version!
That's eminently possible. But a trial is free (apart from your time). And since it seems that SF8 for that scanner will run on Mojave, you could always migrate ... o_O
 
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That's eminently possible. But a trial is free (apart from your time). And since it seems that SF8 for that scanner will run on Mojave, you could always migrate ... o_O

I decided to give it a try, and have downloaded a demo of SF 8.8. There was a link to drivers, and the latest I found for the 7500i on that page was for MacOS 10.11 (I think this is the version I have). Then I found this on their site (note, it is NOT entirely accurate):

"Apple has ceased to support 32-bit systems. Scanners lacking 64-bit drivers are not compatible with macOS 10.14.

"For the last several years, Apple has been preparing to transition to a purely 64-bit system. In macOS 10.14, this step has been taken: 32-bit apps and drivers are no longer supported. In this new version, affected scanners will no longer function with SilverFast until their drivers are updated to support 64-bit.

"At this point in time, some scanner manufacturers only provide 32-bit drivers, which are currently not supported by macOS 10.14. We thus urgently recommend that you contact your scanner manufacturer prior to updating to macOS 10.14 in order to determine the compatibility of your device."

The inaccuracy is that 10.14 DOES actually support 32-bit software, although it complains about it; 10.15 will not support 32-bit software. Nevertheless, this gives me very little (or no) confidence that SF 8 will run with my scanner on 10.15!
 
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