by leejo on 1/28/23, 3:41 PM with 49 comments
by rasz on 1/28/23, 6:14 PM
2. "3,000 Euro repair bill" “The problem is when the FireWire port dies the only repair that is ever proven to be effective has been to replace the entire main board.” is BS from repair company. Where do they get the replacement boards from? answer is they dont, they fix it by replacing $1 component and charging for knowledge and rarity. You are paying for secret knowledge of where to hit the machine with hammer. Hasselblad neither manufactures chips nor ordered custom Firewire controller just for this very niche product. Someone like STS Telecom (https://www.ststele.com https://www.youtube.com/@ststele/videos) or iPad Rehab (https://www.ipadrehab.com/ https://www.youtube.com/@JessaJones/videos) will be able to do the repair at reasonable (compared to $3K) cost without overcharging for working on rare professional photography hardware. As a bonus they will happily publish reverse engineering results so others can also repair their scanners in the future. The issue might be as trivial and simple as bad capacitors in need of a recap, this is 15 year old hardware after all.
by dTal on 1/28/23, 9:18 PM
I'm sure there are many objections to this setup - I know resolution isn't everything and I'm unsure if a Sony IMX477 sensor is "good enough" for the author in terms of color and dynamic range - but you can't argue with the price!
[0]https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/microscope-lens-0-12-1-8x...
by antiterra on 1/28/23, 4:29 PM
by xeromal on 1/28/23, 7:00 PM
If anyone needs to scan through bulk printed photos, I used this device to scan all my mom's stored photos for her wedding gift. I scanned over 12,000 photos over hte course of a few months so I couldn't bother with raising a lid. This thing makes short work of 20-30 photos per batch and it does a great job at scanning them. I host a small pikapod that has them tagged by a rudimentary AI for their faces and other objects. It was a fun little project and warmed my heart.
by yellowapple on 1/28/23, 8:02 PM
This presupposes that the patented invention is trivial to reproduce by mere knowledge of its existence - in which case, is that really the best use of a patent system?
Most worthwhile inventions can't be easily duplicated like that; the knowledge of how to manufacture it, continue iterating/improving on it, etc. is almost certainly concentrated in and around the inventor - giving the inventor a considerable first-mover's advantage. A better system, in that case, would be to ensure the inventor can capitalize on that advantage - in particular, that even individual inventors have access to capital such that they can start producing their inventions.
(A better system than that would be for everyone to have a safety net sufficiently strong such that they can collaborate on inventions solely motivated by intellectual curiosity rather than needing to worry about monetary gain, but I digress...)
by bombcar on 1/28/23, 4:47 PM
by yieldcrv on 1/28/23, 7:41 PM
people have an extremely limited view of patents to suggest this.
so you're working a 9-5, spent all of your savings on getting a patent because you did perceive something everyone else neglected, and people on the internet are like "go form a startup and raise capital, or else"! that's not what they say, but they don't think about what they say. they imagine a person with a toolkit in a garage or writing software and that's it, and then imagine creating and monetizing that one thing is the best use of their time, otherwise the idea shouldn't have been contributed to society at all. funny, who living in an economic center and has a garage anyway?
until we can have a real discussion on patenting and patent holders, as well as the incentives in making the patent claims broader and more generic than the inventor really had in mind, this conversation will go nowhere.
by bambax on 1/28/23, 6:15 PM
by kaispowergoo on 1/28/23, 4:44 PM
https://www.macworld.com/article/226834/an-ode-to-kais-power...
I believe a drum scanner was used.
by at_a_remove on 1/28/23, 6:10 PM
by derefr on 1/28/23, 5:25 PM
Does a good modern camera with a macro lens, shooting from a few inches away, have a higher effective DPI than this scanner?
If so, is the only problem trying to get a predictable, smooth grid of pictures from such a camera to stitch together?
And if so, couldn't you just stick the camera to... a CNC machine, say? Is that not a thing?
by williamscales on 1/28/23, 6:04 PM
by Const-me on 1/28/23, 6:27 PM
Luckily, my scanner is USB, and VMware Workstation allows to forward complete USB devices to a guest OS. When I need to scan something, I fire up a virtual machine with 32-bits Windows XP inside, with OG drivers, and scanning software.
by snapetom on 1/28/23, 7:37 PM
by flipthefrog on 1/28/23, 5:06 PM