Scanner driver?

[Bob Henson]

(e-mail address removed) said...

I was using a couple webcams, as a source of potential USB
devices to grab. And I'm still stuck... Even after some reboots
of both the host and the guest. I keep getting the same error
message when I try to capture a device.

I have a question for you. Did you install the "extras" package
to your Ubuntu guest ? That is where I stopped yesterday - I
need to install Ubuntu on the virtual drive inside the virtual
machine, then try and install the "extras" or add-ins package,
and perhaps then I'll be seeing my test webcams. Up to now,
I was running Ubuntu as if it was a LiveCD, and maybe that
is why it's not working.

I have the extras packet and installed it in Linux, and it is certainly
essential.

If you're seeing this:

Bus 002 Device 003: ID 03f0:0205 Hewlett-Packard ScanJet 3300c

then I'd get that "SANE and friends" packages installed, and
see if you can start scanning. That would be proof the device
is really mapped into the guest OS.

Paul

Now - this is going to sound ridiculous, and I'm going to do more
testing later to see if it replicates every time. When you plug in a USB
device, it gives the standard Windows sound for a connecting USB device,
and then (if you have things set that way) pops up the Windows Autoplay
menu for the device, which, I close) - i.e. the device has connected to
the host machine.

The device shows up (if you're not running the guest full screen) in the
Virtualbox headers under "Devices > USB Devices" If you look at that
list of devices there is a faint, vertical, grey line to the left of the
devices. If you try to click the device name you get a complicated error
message (means nothing to me) and nothing works. If you click opposite
the device but TO THE LEFT OF THE GREY LINE, you immediately get the
windows "USB disconnecting" sound as the device is disconnected from the
host. If you go away form that menu for a second and then reopen it, a
large tick has appeared adjacent to the device and TO THE LEFT of that
grey line. Within seconds the device then automatically mounts itself -
and all is well.

If I'm correct, the only problem is a stupid bug (or inaccuracy) in
Virtualbox which requires you to click in PRECISELY the correct place to
get the desired effect. It sounds ludicrous, but it's worked so far
(five or six attempts with different USB devices). It may or may not be
a known problem - but I'm hoping I now have a known answer!


--
Regards,

Bob

Licentiae, quam stulti libertatem vocabant - Tacitus

 

[Paul]

(e-mail address removed) said...

I have the extras packet and installed it in Linux, and it is certainly
essential.



Now - this is going to sound ridiculous, and I'm going to do more
testing later to see if it replicates every time. When you plug in a USB
device, it gives the standard Windows sound for a connecting USB device,
and then (if you have things set that way) pops up the Windows Autoplay
menu for the device, which, I close) - i.e. the device has connected to
the host machine.

The device shows up (if you're not running the guest full screen) in the
Virtualbox headers under "Devices > USB Devices" If you look at that
list of devices there is a faint, vertical, grey line to the left of the
devices. If you try to click the device name you get a complicated error
message (means nothing to me) and nothing works. If you click opposite
the device but TO THE LEFT OF THE GREY LINE, you immediately get the
windows "USB disconnecting" sound as the device is disconnected from the
host. If you go away form that menu for a second and then reopen it, a
large tick has appeared adjacent to the device and TO THE LEFT of that
grey line. Within seconds the device then automatically mounts itself -
and all is well.

If I'm correct, the only problem is a stupid bug (or inaccuracy) in
Virtualbox which requires you to click in PRECISELY the correct place to
get the desired effect. It sounds ludicrous, but it's worked so far
(five or six attempts with different USB devices). It may or may not be
a known problem - but I'm hoping I now have a known answer!

I'm seeing different issues here. The list of USB devices doesn't seem
to update itself. For example, I can unplug a webcam, and the menu
entry in VirtualBox stays there. And the response when I click the
entry, is the same error message every time. I've tried installing
the Guest Add-Ons in both a Windows guest OS and the Ubuntu x64
installation, and it made no difference at all. The error message
I'm getting, suggests it's an issue between VirtualBox and Windows 7
(the host), rather than a function of the guest.

The error message includes a GUID (long string of numbers and letters),
and I looked for that in Regedit on the host, only to find it
doesn't exist. So I don't know as a result, whether VirtualBox is
looking for the wrong thing, or the GUID it prints on the screen
has nothing to do with the host operation at all.

I even tried running VirtualBox elevated, and the comical result
was, the USB menu stopped working entirely You could click the
USB entry, and there was no menu and no response. The entry above,
for the CD drive, continued to work properly. So running elevated
didn't have any positive effect.

I think I'm going to ditch it pretty soon, as I'm just not making
any progress.

Paul

 

[Bob Henson]

(e-mail address removed) said...

I'm seeing different issues here. The list of USB devices doesn't seem
to update itself. For example, I can unplug a webcam, and the menu
entry in VirtualBox stays there.

It does here too - the entries go when you shut Virtualbox and restart.
It may be that it leaves them there in case you plug the device back in
again - I haven't checked that.

And the response when I click the
entry, is the same error message every time. I've tried installing
the Guest Add-Ons in both a Windows guest OS and the Ubuntu x64
installation, and it made no difference at all. The error message
I'm getting, suggests it's an issue between VirtualBox and Windows 7
(the host), rather than a function of the guest.

I got something like that, until I started clicking in the correct
place.

The error message includes a GUID (long string of numbers and letters),
and I looked for that in Regedit on the host, only to find it
doesn't exist. So I don't know as a result, whether VirtualBox is
looking for the wrong thing, or the GUID it prints on the screen
has nothing to do with the host operation at all.

It might well be the guest, I suppose - but I'm way out of my depth in
even guessing that.

I even tried running VirtualBox elevated, and the comical result
was, the USB menu stopped working entirely You could click the
USB entry, and there was no menu and no response. The entry above,
for the CD drive, continued to work properly. So running elevated
didn't have any positive effect.

I think I'm going to ditch it pretty soon, as I'm just not making
any progress.

I'm going to persevere with it, as it's now running OK here (more by
luck than judgement) - next try is a second installation of Mint 10RC to
test it out before I commit it to my laptop. Then I'm going to try
running XP in a VM. The main advantage of being retired is having time
to play with these things - even if I don't know what I'm doing. Next
project is to LEARN what I'm doing - before my brain goes totally!


--
Regards,

Bob

Licentiae, quam stulti libertatem vocabant - Tacitus

 

[Stan Brown]

(e-mail address removed) said...


Stan, I not very techie, but I tried to install Linux Mint 64bit in
Virtualbox on my 64 bit Win7 machine, and got the error message that
VT-x/AMD-V needed to be enabled in my BIOS - I guess that's something to
do with the processor - is yours an AMD processor and might this be the
problem?

Thanks for the thought, but it's an Intel core i5 chip.

Failing that, my old scanner (HP 3300) has the same driver problem
(no 64bit drivers), but runs fine with 32bit Ubuntu (and,
presumably, 64bit). It's a lot of trouble to go to, but you could
try installing 32bit Ubuntu in Virtualbox and running your scanner
from there - that way you get round the problems of installing a
dual boot system anyway - you can just run a VM when you need to
scan from within Windows.

Good suggestions; thanks.

I really need to get Virtualbox up and running. I've downloaded it
but haven't installed it yet. And I really would like to explore
Linux, but finding time is the problem.

 

[Stan Brown]

"In the proprietary edition (not in the open-source edition),
a USB controller is emulated (both USB 1.1 and USB 2.0) so that
any USB devices attached to the host can be seen in the guest."

so that is the edition you'd want if attempting to run a scanner
on the host system, via a driver in the guest OS.

Whoa -- thanks for the heads-up. I'm pretty sure I downloaded the
open-source edition, so I'll have to go back and get the other one.

 

[Paul]

Whoa -- thanks for the heads-up. I'm pretty sure I downloaded the
open-source edition, so I'll have to go back and get the other one.

I've been testing the proprietary edition here, with the USB
support for the guest OS, and it isn't working for me. I'm going
to move to a different computer and retest, and see if the behavior
changes. Unfortunately, I don't have enough resources here, to
isolate the problem to the chipset used. But that's my theory at
the moment.

What happens is, I can't get the guest OS to "capture" a USB
device from the host. So right now, for me, there is no
difference between the Open Source and Proprietary editions,
as the USB isn't working for me. I can still run a guest OS
and that part works. But if I had a USB scanner, and wanted
to use it in the guest, I'd be out of luck. I'm going to
try it on an "all Intel" type system, and see if things
improve or not.

For experiments like this, I'll be backing up the C:
partition first, and I've still got a mess to clean
up from the last batch of experiments. So it'll be a
day or two, before I can report back.

Paul

 

[Bob Henson]

Whoa -- thanks for the heads-up. I'm pretty sure I downloaded the
open-source edition, so I'll have to go back and get the other one.

The file I got from Oracle's site is Virtualbox-3.2.10-66523-win.exe -
that's the correct proprietory one for Windows 7 64bit. That is now
working like clockwork here - and my old scanner is just fine run from
Linux-mint 9 32bit (Ubuntu)as guest O/S. The next suggestions may already
be clear from the previous conversations in the thread - so bear with me
if I'm repeating myself.

The first important thing to remember are that is you're going to install
a 64 bit guest you need to enable Secure Virtual Machine in your host
BIOS. This was what the VT-x/AMD-V thing was about that I couldn't get the
hang of before. I'd guess that on an Intel system it's still called Secure
Virtual Machine in the BIOS. If you're only installing a 32 bit guest in
the VM, it doesn't matter - all that's just a red herring,ignore it.

The next thing is this business of the Install Guest Additions. You need
to do that when you have the guest Linux O/S running. Click "Devices >
Install guest additions" in the VM, and shortly thereafter (maybe it needs
a "Guest" restart, but I don't recall that) the .iso will appear mounted
in Linux. You need to run that .iso to intall it into Linux.

When you've got that far, you should see you see a list of USB devices on
your HOST system already populating the drop down menu under "Devices >
USB devices" on the VM. When you plug in your scanner it should appear in
that menu (give it a second or two). The critical thing is not to click
the scanner's NAME, but the space just before it to the left of the faint
grey vertical line. A tick should appear by it, the host should give up
the device, and you should then be able to run it from the guest system.

 

[Stan Brown]

[great hints on getting VirtualBox working]

Thanks, Bob!

 

[Paul]

I've been testing the proprietary edition here, with the USB
support for the guest OS, and it isn't working for me. I'm going
to move to a different computer and retest, and see if the behavior
changes. Unfortunately, I don't have enough resources here, to
isolate the problem to the chipset used. But that's my theory at
the moment.

What happens is, I can't get the guest OS to "capture" a USB
device from the host. So right now, for me, there is no
difference between the Open Source and Proprietary editions,
as the USB isn't working for me. I can still run a guest OS
and that part works. But if I had a USB scanner, and wanted
to use it in the guest, I'd be out of luck. I'm going to
try it on an "all Intel" type system, and see if things
improve or not.

For experiments like this, I'll be backing up the C:
partition first, and I've still got a mess to clean
up from the last batch of experiments. So it'll be a
day or two, before I can report back.

Paul

OK, I finished a second set of tests.

WinXP_x32 host + Ubuntu_10.10_x32 guest +
Intel_CPU + Intel_chipset + guest_additions = conditional pass.

I ended up, being able to see my test USB device in the guest OS. And
WinXP made the appropriate noises with regard to a USB device being
dynamically removed (and added to the guest) at the appropriate time.

The problem I had with this test, is the USB device was not completely
functional. I could run "lsusb -v" and get a detailed config dump.
But attempts to run the webcam and get an image, returned an error
about being unable to allocate a buffer. Perhaps the USB software
in VirtualBox, isn't functionally complete ?

If I took the Ubuntu_10.10_x32 distro, burned a CD, and booted
it "native" on the Intel_CPU + Intel_chipset system, the webcam
was fully functional. I was able to record video using a program
called "cheese" ("cheese" being installed via Synaptic Package Manager).

So while VirtualBox was able to redirect host USB to guest
virtual USB, it didn't seem to be a complete success.

Now it's time for Stan to test

*******

One other note, on the guest additions. That function is a bit on
the clunky side.

First, VirtualBox supports mounting one virtual CD at a time. If
you're doing an install, the virtual CD would be the ISO9660 image
of boot CD being used for installation purposes. When you select
the function to install guest additions, all that does is
mount the guest additions ISO9660 file.

If the guest OS is a Windows OS, the ISO9660 image has an autorun
file in it. That helps trigger the execution of the updates in
the Windows guest OS.

If the guest OS is Linux, then its a different animal. The act of
pointing the guest at that particular ISO9660, doesn't automatically
cause Linux to mount the ISO. If you wanted to mount it immediately,
you'd need something like

sudo mount -t iso9660 /dev/sr0 /media/some_mount_point

and then it would be mounted. I'm too lazy to do that, so I just
restarted the Ubuntu guest OS, so that Ubuntu would discover
the guest_additions ISO9660 on the next restart. That
gets it mounted in Ubuntu. You should see a CD icon on the
left of the screen, the next time Ubuntu is running.

Now, you'd need to go to Accessories, and open a Terminal
window. Using the "df" command, you can discover the mount
point, which will be along the lines of /media/some_mount_point .
In the Terminal window, you'd do

cd /media/some_mount_point
ls

and get the name of the particular additions file needed. Then,
you run that file as root, because it's messing around with
kernel related stuff.

sudo ./linux_addition_blah_blah_x64.run

The file in question, has an extension of .run . And that is a
hint, it's an installer. It takes a good long time for that
to install.

It also takes a few reboots, before both host and guest
settle down. Then, finally, the USB capture function
starts to work. I set up a USB filter in the preferences,
and got the guest OS to capture my 046D:0990 webcam.

Anyway, that's a hint about Linux additions and VirtualBox,
and it's lack of intelligent autoplay.

Paul

 

[Stan Brown]

Whoa -- thanks for the heads-up. I'm pretty sure I downloaded the
open-source edition, so I'll have to go back and get the other one.

I've finally had time to install VirtualBox, and I've got mixed
reactions.

The creation of the VM and install of Windows XP on it were trouble
free. And I was able to connect my Canon LiDE 50 scanner and scan
successfully, then save the scanned file to a shared folder and pick
it up on the host operating system. ACPI shutdown seems to hang
VirtualBox, so I have to remember to shut down the guest OS through
the Win XP Start button.

But so far I've failed to get the guest XP system to recognize my TI-
84, and I'm not sure what to try next.

There are two pieces of software: TI-Connect and TI-GraphLink. Both
installed just fine. TI-Connect works through a USB connection, and
the Devices tab in the guest OS window does see the calculator. But
when I try to do anything in TI-Connect I get an unhelpful message
that it found the TI-84 Silver but couldn't get information from it.

TI-GraphLink works through a serial port. (I mess with it because it
can do a lot more than TI-Connect, even though it's Windows 3 legacy
software.) I have a serial-port-to-USB hub, which worked fine n my
old Win XP laptop with no need to install drivers. I've established
the required USB filters in the virtual machine, but the software
absolutely will not recognize the calculator. The message in each
case is "Could not open communications port." But *something* is
going on, because when I have the calculator connected and try to get
a screen shot, there is a delay of a few seconds before that message
appears, but when I disconnect the calculator and try again, that
message appears instantly.

I imagine that few folks here if any are familiar with the TI
software. But does anyone have any advice on getting USB ports
working with unusual devices? The scanner was fine, so I'd assume at
least the direct USB connection for the calculator would be fine, but
it isn't. It sure looks like some sort of *partial* connection is
established by each piece of software, particularly TI-Connect.

 

[Stan Brown]

The file I got from Oracle's site is Virtualbox-3.2.10-66523-win.exe -
that's the correct proprietory one for Windows 7 64bit.

The first important thing to remember are that is you're going to install
a 64 bit guest

Thanks, Bob. I should have mentioned that I had no plans to install
a 64-bit guest. I needed (and have installed) a 32-bit Guest Win XP
because 64-bit Win 7 won't install the drivers for my scanner or my
TI-84 calculator.

The next thing is this business of the Install Guest Additions.

Yes, did that. Folder sharing seems to work, and so does mouse
sharing without capture. The USB ports sort-of work: the scanner is
fine, but there's some sort of weird broken connection to the
calculator. (See the message I just posted to this thread for
details.)

When you've got that far, you should see you see a list of USB devices on
your HOST system already populating the drop down menu under "Devices >
USB devices" on the VM. When you plug in your scanner it should appear in
that menu (give it a second or two). The critical thing is not to click
the scanner's NAME, but the space just before it to the left of the faint
grey vertical line.

Did you mean to the RIGHT of the gray vertical line? Nothing happens
when I click to the left (in the area where the checks appear), but
when I click to the right of that line and then reopen Devices » USB
the device that I click appears checked.

 

[Bob Henson]

Thanks, Bob. I should have mentioned that I had no plans to install
a 64-bit guest. I needed (and have installed) a 32-bit Guest Win XP
because 64-bit Win 7 won't install the drivers for my scanner or my
TI-84 calculator.


Yes, did that. Folder sharing seems to work, and so does mouse
sharing without capture. The USB ports sort-of work: the scanner is
fine, but there's some sort of weird broken connection to the
calculator. (See the message I just posted to this thread for
details.)


Did you mean to the RIGHT of the gray vertical line? Nothing happens
when I click to the left (in the area where the checks appear), but
when I click to the right of that line and then reopen Devices » USB
the device that I click appears checked.

How odd, it's just the opposite here. Still, you got it all working. I saw
your other post about the TI software - can't help there, I'm afraid. It
gives me a great sense of pleasure to use my old scanner now, so I was glad
to hear yours worked in the end.

I've got two version of Linux Mint running in Virtualbox at the moment for
comparison purposes. I'm planning to add XP when I can find my old install
disks - so it's good to know it runs OK in Virtualbox. I've more or less
abandoned my plans to run a dual boot system now - why bother when you can
run more than one simultaneously.

 

[Stan Brown]

Further to the issue at the start of this thread, I installed VMWare
Player also with 32-bit Win XP Pro, but with the same bad results as
under VirtualBox: the program running in the virtual machine knew
there was *something* at the end of that serial-port-to-USB
interface, but couldn't access it.

Unless someone has a bright idea for how I can hook a serial cable to
my Dell Inspiron, running Win 7 Home Premium x64, and have a virtual
machine be able to access it, I'm stumped(*). I hate to think I
won't be able to use the TI-GraphLink software any more, because it's
a much better interface than TI-Connect and has more capabilities,
but it sure looks that way. (Just to be sure, I tried installing it
directly on Win 7, but Windows said it was incompatible: not
surprising since it was written for Windows 3.)

(*) This laptop computer doesn't actually have a serial port.

At least my scanner works in VirtualBox, so the last twelve hours
haven't been completely wasted.

Does anyone know if VirtualBox can be configured to drag-and-drop
files between host and guest? That was a nice feature of VMWare
Player, but all I could find in the documentation on VirtualBox was
setting up a shared folder (which I've done, and which works).

 

[Paul]

Further to the issue at the start of this thread, I installed VMWare
Player also with 32-bit Win XP Pro, but with the same bad results as
under VirtualBox: the program running in the virtual machine knew
there was *something* at the end of that serial-port-to-USB
interface, but couldn't access it.

Unless someone has a bright idea for how I can hook a serial cable to
my Dell Inspiron, running Win 7 Home Premium x64, and have a virtual
machine be able to access it, I'm stumped(*). I hate to think I
won't be able to use the TI-GraphLink software any more, because it's
a much better interface than TI-Connect and has more capabilities,
but it sure looks that way. (Just to be sure, I tried installing it
directly on Win 7, but Windows said it was incompatible: not
surprising since it was written for Windows 3.)

(*) This laptop computer doesn't actually have a serial port.

At least my scanner works in VirtualBox, so the last twelve hours
haven't been completely wasted.

Does anyone know if VirtualBox can be configured to drag-and-drop
files between host and guest? That was a nice feature of VMWare
Player, but all I could find in the documentation on VirtualBox was
setting up a shared folder (which I've done, and which works).

A quick search, shows there is a small community out there already,
supporting interfacing to TI calculators. You need to tap into
some of this stuff, to get some ideas.

http://lpg.ticalc.org/prj_tilp/news.html

If the TI calculator, used a conventional USB to serial
port cable, it might be a different matter. I don't know, at
this point, if that is how it works or not. If TI had a
USB to RS232 chip inside the calculator, and there was a
Windows driver for that, then perhaps installing that driver
would make it work. If, on the other hand, the interface
is "USB to calculator main chip", it might be a very custom
driver.

http://www.linux-usb.org/usb.ids

0451 Texas Instruments, Inc.
e008 TI-84 Plus Silver Calculator

In theory, the VirtualBox driver, should be steering USB packets
with certain endpoint addresses, into the guest OS. And then operation
there should be indistinguishable from the real thing. But in my testing,
it didn't seem to be nearly that seamless. When you report it misbehaving,
that correlates with what I've seen here.

VPC2007 supports serial port redirection. But for that to work for you,
you'd need a USB to serial port driver for the host OS, and then you
tell VPC2007 settings, which COM port, like COM3, corresponds to the
COM port you want made visible in the guest OS. And I don't see the point
of going to that much trouble. If you had a working driver for USB to
serial in the first place, you wouldn't need a virtual machine. It would
just work.

If there was software in Linux for communicating with the TI calculator,
you could try running Linux in the guest OS. Even to see if it was possible
to communicate with the calculator.

Examples of devices which use separate USB to RS232, would be things
like GPS. Some GPS, consist of a RS232 chip created years ago, with a
USB to RS232 slapped on it, to make a USB version. And in that case,
as long as you have a USB to serial driver that works with the conversion
chip inside the GPS, it should just work as before (as if you were
communicating with the serial port version).

Paul

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

A quick search, shows there is a small community out there already,
supporting interfacing to TI calculators. You need to tap into
some of this stuff, to get some ideas.

http://lpg.ticalc.org/prj_tilp/news.html

If the TI calculator, used a conventional USB to serial
port cable, it might be a different matter. I don't know, at
this point, if that is how it works or not. If TI had a
USB to RS232 chip inside the calculator, and there was a
Windows driver for that, then perhaps installing that driver
would make it work. If, on the other hand, the interface
is "USB to calculator main chip", it might be a very custom
driver.

http://www.linux-usb.org/usb.ids

0451 Texas Instruments, Inc.
e008 TI-84 Plus Silver Calculator

In theory, the VirtualBox driver, should be steering USB packets
with certain endpoint addresses, into the guest OS. And then operation
there should be indistinguishable from the real thing. But in my testing,
it didn't seem to be nearly that seamless. When you report it misbehaving,
that correlates with what I've seen here.

VPC2007 supports serial port redirection. But for that to work for you,
you'd need a USB to serial port driver for the host OS, and then you
tell VPC2007 settings, which COM port, like COM3, corresponds to the
COM port you want made visible in the guest OS. And I don't see the point
of going to that much trouble. If you had a working driver for USB to
serial in the first place, you wouldn't need a virtual machine. It would
just work.

If there was software in Linux for communicating with the TI calculator,
you could try running Linux in the guest OS. Even to see if it was possible
to communicate with the calculator.

Examples of devices which use separate USB to RS232, would be things
like GPS. Some GPS, consist of a RS232 chip created years ago, with a
USB to RS232 slapped on it, to make a USB version. And in that case,
as long as you have a USB to serial driver that works with the conversion
chip inside the GPS, it should just work as before (as if you were
communicating with the serial port version).

Paul

A lot of scanner, short-wave, and similar radios can exchange data with
or be controlled by computers. Some radios *only* run as a
computer-controlled device.

Many of them - even fairly new ones - have only RS-232 ports, and many
have the setup you describe above, where inside the radio is a USB to
RS-232 chip piggy backed on the same old RS-232 port. A few are starting
to look like native USB, however (of course, I often can't be sure
what's really inside).

Awfully conservative, in my view...

 

[rpbourret]

I'm only a couple of years late, but this may solve your problem.

If you haven't already done so, set up Windows XP Mode. (There are plenty of sites telling you how to do this. For me, at least, it was a very straightforward and painless process.)

In Windows XP mode, use Start/Programs/Accessories/Scanner and Camera Wizard. This appears to include a generic driver, as it allows me to use a UMAX Astra 2100U scanner for which I have not installed a driver. (You have to pay for the driver for this scanner for XP and I didn't.)

Good luck!