Paradigm ImagePRO Ci40m HD TCP/IP setup

I've removed advertising from most of this site and will eventually clean up the few pages where it remains.

While not terribly expensive to maintain, this does cost me something. If I don't get enough donations to cover that expense, I will be shutting the site down in early 2020.

If you found something useful today, please consider a small donation.

I was a bit puzzled that a long time customer called me to come set up a scanner. My first thought was that this must be another one of those scanner/copier things and a complicated front panel had defeated him, so I offered to try to help him through it on the phone.

"No", he said, "It's pretty straight forward. A little unusual - you have to put an IP on the device AND into the program, but it's pretty obvious how to do that. It just doesn't work."

I was still reluctant. Maybe he picked an IP address already in use, maybe he had a bad cable, a bad switch port? No, he checked all that. Maybe it's just defective? He agreed that last was at least possible, but would I please just come look at it?

OK. I drove out there yesterday. The scanner turned out to be a Large Format type for engineering drawings - specifically a Paradigm ImagePRO Ci40m HD. As he said, there was nothing complicated about the TCP/IP setup - the device itself had a front panel that let you plug in an IP address and the accompanying software had a configuration utility where you could tell it what IP you had used. As he said, simple enough. And as he also said, it didn't work.

Okey-dokey. I double checked all the bad cable, bad port, ip conflict stuff. Nothing wrong there. The scanner would work if you hooked it up to a USB cable, but that had to be very short and where he wanted to put this was a long way from the desktops that would be using it. We needed TCP/IP.

I had sent my customer off to find a support number for the manufacturer. I was convinced we really needed an RMA, but you always have to start with support. While I was waiting, I stared grumpily at the software interface and its little window that told me once again, no, I can't see any scanner. Aaargh.

Because I had nothing else to do, I clicked on a tiny little "i" in the left hand corner of the window. To my surprise, this opened up to a connection window that was somewhat similar to the configuration utility, but obviously different. For one thing, this windows said that we were intending to use a USB cable. I'd already told the configuration utility that we wanted TCP/IP, but here this was apparently still set for USB. I clicked TCP/IP, saved it and tried restarting the software again. Still no luck.

I was just curious as to whether my selection had stuck, so I want back into the little "i". Yes, it still said TCP/IP. I decided to click on it's "settings" button. No point, really, as I'd already made the IP settings in the configuration utility, but heck, I was still waiting, right? So I clicked "Settings".

The IP address was blank.

Yeah, blank. I blinked twice. I blinked again. Still blank. I sighed and filled in the address. Saved it, quit out, restarted and.. scanner connected, working, ready to pull in documents.

Absolutely amazing. A hidden configuration utility that you need and a visible utility that does nothing. Excellent programming, guys!

If you found something useful today, please consider a small donation.

Got something to add? Send me email.

5 comments

Fri Apr 16 13:26:17 2010: 8425   MarkBelanger




Instead of beating up on those programmers, you should be buying them a beer.

Their slapdash interface earned you a couple hundred bucks in service call fees.






Fri Apr 16 13:33:41 2010: 8426   TonyLawrence




You sound like my wife :-)

I know - it's money. I'll deposit the check.



Fri Apr 16 14:37:00 2010: 8427   BigDumbDinosaur




That's why people like us exist: to find hidden setup screens. It has nothing to do with technical training, just curiosity. :-)



Fri Apr 16 14:44:08 2010: 8428   TonyLawrence




You might be right. But don't forget idle time and fidgeting. If I hadn't been waiting for the support number, I might not have found this. I HOPE the support folks would have directed me to that (but you never know).

By the way, the device is also off-putting in that it puts up an error about 100Mb Ethernet. I assume that it could only negotiate a 10Mb connection (though it SHOULD have been able to get 100) and that's why. As scanners like this take their sweet time anyway, 10 or 100 hardly matters so I didn't bother to investigate that.

------------------------

Have you tried Searching this site?

This is a Unix/Linux resource website. It contains technical articles about Unix, Linux and general computing related subjects, opinion, news, help files, how-to's, tutorials and more.

Contact us