Getting an Epson Perfection 2450 scanner to work

Jeff Layman · Post by **Jeff Layman** » Sat Mar 23, 2024 7:55 am

Deciding it would be useful to scan some old transparency slides, I dug out my old (22+ years!) Epson Perfection 2450 scanner, previously used with Windows XP (Firewire) and Windows 7 (USB2). As an aside, at the time I was surprised how much slower USB2 scanning was than with Firewire. More recently, I'd also had an Epson Expression Home All-in-one XP-325, which I'd used with a laptop running LM 17.3 and Xsane for scanning, also using USB2. However, the XP-325 died a couple of years ago, but as it was an Epson scanner which had worked with Mint, I thought that there was a good chance the Perfection 2450 would work too.

The laptop which had originally run 17.3 had been through several upgrades, ending with 21.3 a couple of months ago. I'd had no experience with Epson 2450 drivers for Mint, so went to Epson's website and downloaded iscan-bundle-2.30.4.x64.deb.tar.gz. It installed without problem, and after a check and reboot I turned on the 2450 and plugged in its USB lead. Nothing at all happened (I thought I might get something like a "new scanner detected" message). I tried running Image Scan and then Xsane, but neither could detect the scanner. I tried a different USB lead, but the result was the same. There was nothing in the logs that I could see which might account for this.

Just about ready to give up, I remembered that the laptop had a mini-Firewire port, and I had a mini-Firewire to Firewire cable. I'd read previously that it might not be simple getting a Firewire connection work with Mint, and some software installation could be required, but didn't have anything to lose. I plugged in the Firewire cable, and again there was no message. It didn't look promising, but I ran Image Scan again and up popped its GUI showing a connection to the 2450!

A test scan of an A4 coloured print went well, so I connected up the transparency scanner. That worked well too. It's just a pity that the transparencies had faded and discoloured badly after many years!

Jeff