Today, I got my Mustek ScanExpress 1200 UB Plus flatbed scanner working under Ubuntu. It’s funny, I honestly think it works better under linux than it ever did on windows.
As I feared, it was not a simple task, but also not as daunting as the kernel recompile to get wifi working. I used the following steps.
Step 1: Install XSane, and the sane tools and the extra backends. This was simple using the package manager.
Step 2: Download the firmware for this scanner from: http://www.meier-geinitz.de/sane/gt68xx-backend/firmware/sbfw.usb
Step 3: Open a terminal window, and su to root or use sudo. Copy the firmware to: /usr/share/sane/gt68xx
Step 4: Open the file /etc/sane.d/gt68xx.conf in a text editor, I used gedit
Step 5: Find the line “# Mustek ScanExpress 1200 UB Plus:” and uncomment the override statement, and add a line for the firmware ‘firmware “sbfw.usb”‘ The resulting section of the file should look like I have below.
##############################################################################
# Autodetect Mustek BearPaw 1200 CU, 2400 CU, Mustek ScanExpress 1200 UB Plus,
# Artec Ultima 2000, and several other GT-6801-based scanners
usb 0x05d8 0x4002
# Mustek BearPaw 1200 CU doesn't need any manual override
# Mustek ScanExpress 1200 UB Plus:
override "mustek-scanexpress-1200-ub-plus"
firmware "sbfw.usb"
Step 6: From the command line type “scanimage -L” it should report back that you have a “Mustek ScanExpress 1200 UB Plus flatbed scanner”, if so you should now be able to scan.
john@Medion-Laptop:~$ scanimage -L
device `gt68xx:libusb:001:010' is a Mustek ScanExpress 1200 UB Plus flatbed scanner
Much of this information was taken from:
http://www.usalug.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=95686&sid=e55b9bc74af37869d9194691a687af00
John's Musings 