On Wed, 27 May 2015 23:10:03, Andrew Greig said,

My question was how can a proprietary product, completely stand-alone in my ~/ , load in seconds, and discover the SCSI card in seconds, and be ready to work?

The scsi specifcation requires any device to be able to clearly identify itself. This is required to get around exactly this issue.

Xsane, when installed into a running machine has always needed a reboot to start working. In fact if I cancel a scan (I have learned not to do this) Xsane will not even find the scanner until I reboot.

I have an Epson Perfection 4990 Photo scanner on a USB port, it does exactly the same thing if one cancels a scan. I have also found a reboot is the only way to get it working again. I cannot now remember if just disconnecting it works. I apologise for the poor formating I have yet to purchase a modem to allow my old email system to work properly again. Lindsay