I'm on my knees to beg for forgiveness for this off-topic subject. My father wants to scan some slides with this trusty HP scanner. Needless to say there is no adapter for that particular type of scanner, so we decided to build something ourselves. We tried many different kinds of regular and fluorescent bulbs in a homemade cover which we placed over the slide. The picture comes out fine, only the colors never match (not even GIMP can correct this).
We just got hold of an old ISA (?) scanner (US$7 at a fair) and the idea was to rip out the bulb and simply connect it to a power supply. From the electronics we could deduct that the bulb runs on AC power (it looks like the DC is coming from the ISA card, runs through a flip-flop consisting of two transistors and then is transformed with a small transformer before going to the bulb). We don't have a clue as to what voltage to use and the thing came without ISA card so there is no way of checking when the scanner is in operation. Any of you have experience/know something more about this? What voltage do these scanner lamps run on? Anybody ever tried to make a transparency adapter? Any hints highly appreciated. Thank you. --hans
