Connecting Nikon Super Coolscan 9000 to Modern PC with Windows 11

[brbo]

Vuescan focuses the scanner before scanning like Nikon Scan does, right? I noticed that Nikon Scan has a plethora of setup and calibration options that I fear I would lose out on in Vuescan.

Vuescan will autofocus at preview, scan, both, never, manually... It's your choice. It will also calibrate the scanner whenever you click 'Scanner - Calibrate'.

It is missing some features from Nikon Scan, but it has it's own versions of ICE, ROC, GEM... and some features that Nikon Scan doesn't have.

 

[radialMelt]

I guess Vuescan will have to do for now, as it does work with the 35mm film carriers. I wonder why Nikon Scan is having issues with only some carriers but not others.

Vuescan focuses the scanner before scanning like Nikon Scan does, right? I noticed that Nikon Scan has a plethora of setup and calibration options that I fear I would lose out on in Vuescan.

Which version of NikonScan are you running? At first I would have guessed it was an issue with the tray, but if VueScan works with the same tray then I wonder...

 

[J C]

Nikon Scan 4.0.3.

As for VueScan, I'm trying out my first scan with the full version now, but I can't work out how to prevent the scanner from outputting an inverted color scan, rather than the scan of the negative as is. I'd prefer to do my own color correction outside of VueScan for now.

 

[radialMelt]

Nikon Scan 4.0.3.

As for VueScan, I'm trying out my first scan with the full version now, but I can't work out how to prevent the scanner from outputting an inverted color scan, rather than the scan of the negative as is. I'd prefer to do my own color correction outside of VueScan for now.

Okay. I too am running 4.0.3 but have not had any issues with any of my film holders. Admittedly, I have not used the one for slides.

VueScan is not intuitive to use. I would highly recommend you check the manual. There's a box to control this behavior on the Input tab. It's labelled "Source". If you want to scan a negative "as it is" then you should select "Media" in this box.

 

[J C]

Much appreciated. I will indeed read the manual.

As for Nikon Scan; I will try scanning some 120 in the one holder that did work.

 

[ant!]

Just received my (relatively cheaply!) found 9000 (incl. a bunch of film holders, incl. the rotating 120 one, this alone seems to sell for twice of what I paid...) and tried it with vuescan under Linux, using my old laptop's expresscard FireWire card which I had used before with Minolta scanners. Beside a dead cable everything went smooth.

What confused me: trying to scan with the glassless 120 holder, vuescan gives me arbitrary frames when when I select manual cropping. I looked it up and seems I have to fiddle manually with frame spacing and offset. Is there no other way? With the Epson v800 I could just zoom out the whole preview and crop frames manually, this doesn't seem to work. Any better idea?

I am also installing right now a Windows XP virtual machine on this laptop, with the goal to try out Nikon scan, since it seems not that great supported on win10 (which I have installed aside Linux)? But I'm afraid getting the FireWire card pass through to the XP virtual machine might be a mess, let's see... Anyone tried out this route?

 

[John Wiegerink]

Just received my (relatively cheaply!) found 9000 (incl. a bunch of film holders, incl. the rotating 120 one, this alone seems to sell for twice of what I paid...) and tried it with vuescan under Linux, using my old laptop's expresscard FireWire card which I had used before with Minolta scanners. Beside a dead cable everything went smooth.

What confused me: trying to scan with the glassless 120 holder, vuescan gives me arbitrary frames when when I select manual cropping. I looked it up and seems I have to fiddle manually with frame spacing and offset. Is there no other way? With the Epson v800 I could just zoom out the whole preview and crop frames manually, this doesn't seem to work. Any better idea?

I am also installing right now a Windows XP virtual machine on this laptop, with the goal to try out Nikon scan, since it seems not that great supported on win10 (which I have installed aside Linux)? But I'm afraid getting the FireWire card pass through to the XP virtual machine might be a mess, let's see... Anyone tried out this route?

I feel your pain! Getting the frame spacing and off-set is a pain in the rump. I even bought the VueScan Bible and it doesn't even explain it that well.

 

[Fish soup]

Just received my (relatively cheaply!) found 9000 (incl. a bunch of film holders, incl. the rotating 120 one, this alone seems to sell for twice of what I paid...) and tried it with vuescan under Linux, using my old laptop's expresscard FireWire card which I had used before with Minolta scanners. Beside a dead cable everything went smooth.

What confused me: trying to scan with the glassless 120 holder, vuescan gives me arbitrary frames when when I select manual cropping. I looked it up and seems I have to fiddle manually with frame spacing and offset. Is there no other way? With the Epson v800 I could just zoom out the whole preview and crop frames manually, this doesn't seem to work. Any better idea?

I am also installing right now a Windows XP virtual machine on this laptop, with the goal to try out Nikon scan, since it seems not that great supported on win10 (which I have installed aside Linux)? But I'm afraid getting the FireWire card pass through to the XP virtual machine might be a mess, let's see... Anyone tried out this route?

Firewire pass through is not supported on any VM I'm aware of. Nikon scan works just fine on win10 if you follow the instructions. If you want to try XP with a firewire scanner you need a machine that runs XP and you need xp drivers for your firewire card. USB pass through works fine though.


edit: OK looking a bit more into it. Seems like there there *might* be a possible work around with PCI-E pass through. But this seems experimental and require a relatively high level of technical know-how and time for tinkering. Just installing on windows 10 will be much easier.

Interesting none the less, here the discussion is getting a legacy firewire audio interface working, but a scanner should not be any different: https://forum.level1techs.com/t/pci-e-firewire-card-passthrough-to-macos-vm-in-proxmox/218195

 

[ant!]

Nikon scan works just fine on win10 if you follow the instructions. ...

edit: OK looking a bit more into it. Seems like there there *might* be a possible work around with PCI-E pass through.

Thanks, I had read somewhere win10 wasn't running it stable, but if it's fine, this would be easier, I'll give it a try. And of course just out of curiosity the VM route, since I have win XP now already up in KVM.

 

[Chan Tran]

I have 2 desktop with firewire but Windows 10 or 11 doesn't support firewire. So a firewire card isn't a solution.

 

[Fish soup]

I have 2 desktop with firewire but Windows 10 or 11 doesn't support firewire. So a firewire card isn't a solution.

It does. I'm running windows 10 on an old mac mini 2012 with firewire scanners connected. You probably just have to find the win10 driver if it doesn't work out of the box.

 

[Fish soup]

Thanks, I had read somewhere win10 wasn't running it stable, but if it's fine, this would be easier, I'll give it a try. And of course just out of curiosity the VM route, since I have win XP now already up in KVM.

Remember to install in compatibility mode. I think the actual firewire card/chip-set can have some influence on stability as well as they don't all seem to be created equal. That's why I went with an old mac mini for this as Apple was the "firewire company" back in the days, so I figured they have a stable implementation.

Let us know how the KVM route works out. This seems to be a largely unexplored option. You will probably still need an XP driver for your firewire card if I'm not misunderstanding how this works? That could make things more difficult.

 

[radialMelt]

Windows 10 absolutely supports FW. I am running Win10 with a Coolscan 9000 (both NikonScan and Vuescan) via a Startech PCIe to FW card.

 

[koraks]

Evidently, there's nothing about Win10 that bars it from supporting IEE1384. The practical challenge is to find hardware and drivers that will work. This may be difference if you run a 32-bit version of the operating system, as 64-bit drivers are likely to be more scarce for this kind of hardware. But as always - it depends on the specifics.

 

[albireo]

I have been running my Coolscan for years out of a 200$ Dell Optiplex small form factor (SFF) desktop PC running Win10 64bit without any issues whatsoever.

I use a 20$ PCI-E fireware card - a 2 minutes purchase off Amazon. I just literally went for the first result of my search query.

I will probably have to replace the Optiplex at some point and get another one fully compatible with Win11, but the current one has been serving me well for the past 11 years.

 

[ant!]

Alright, just to come back: Nikon Scan installed without problems on Win10 using the instructions from https://www.shtengel.com/gleb/getting_nikon_coolscan_scanners_work_under_Win7.htm and the file from https://lincolnscan.co.uk/Reference.html . I have not actually used it yet, but the scanner gets recognized.

I tried as well the VM XP route, which failed at least for my setup. I had let myself guid by Google's AI mode, isolating the device drivers from the Linux host and adding them to the XP system. Unfortunately, on my laptop the Firewire ExpressCard seems to hang on the same PCI bus as some other required devices and a complete isolation was impossible, so the VM did not start after handing over this PCI bus. On a different system this could still a way to go, but at least for me (Kubuntu with KVM/virtual machine manager + Windows 10 VM, on a Thinkpad T540p with Startech Firewire 400 ExpressCard) this wasn't working.

Which is fine, I have now Vuescan (in Linux) and Nikon Scan (in Win10), will compare how I like Nikon Scan or if I continue using Vuescan (raw scans and invertion in Darktable).

 

[John Wiegerink]

Alright, just to come back: Nikon Scan installed without problems on Win10 using the instructions from https://www.shtengel.com/gleb/getting_nikon_coolscan_scanners_work_under_Win7.htm and the file from https://lincolnscan.co.uk/Reference.html . I have not actually used it yet, but the scanner gets recognized.

I tried as well the VM XP route, which failed at least for my setup. I had let myself guid by Google's AI mode, isolating the device drivers from the Linux host and adding them to the XP system. Unfortunately, on my laptop the Firewire ExpressCard seems to hang on the same PCI bus as some other required devices and a complete isolation was impossible, so the VM did not start after handing over this PCI bus. On a different system this could still a way to go, but at least for me (Kubuntu with KVM/virtual machine manager + Windows 10 VM, on a Thinkpad T540p with Startech Firewire 400 ExpressCard) this wasn't working.

Which is fine, I have now Vuescan (in Linux) and Nikon Scan (in Win10), will compare how I like Nikon Scan or if I continue using Vuescan (raw scans and invertion in Darktable).

I would be very interested in your views between NikonScan and VueScan. I already have mine, but am curious as to what other folks think.

 

[xkaes]

This is one of the reasons I have different computers with different operating systems (some are virtual machines) -- so that I can use my older gear and older software.

 

[albireo]

I have now Vuescan (in Linux) and Nikon Scan (in Win10), will compare how I like Nikon Scan or if I continue using Vuescan (raw scans and invertion in Darktable).

Why not use both Vuescan and Nikon Scan on your Win10 platform?

 

[ant!]

Why not use both Vuescan and Nikon Scan on your Win10 platform?

Because I rarely use Windows, it's just a leftover of the OS installed when I bought the computer. I prefer Linux, using Kubuntu (at least private) since 15 years or so.

 

[albireo]

Because I rarely use Windows, it's just a leftover of the OS installed when I bought the computer. I prefer Linux, using Kubuntu (at least private) since 15 years or so.

Ah, I sympathise. I used Slackware/Debian for work for twenty years or so, and loved it - sadly IT where I work now is allergic to Linux and we've all been forced to move to Macs and MacOS, which I hate, in spite of the Unix 'beating heart' well hidden under layers of glossy window management.

At home I use a dual boot Linux Mint/Win 10, and I actually find Win 10 surprisingly smooth.

 

[Fish soup]

I tried as well the VM XP route, which failed at least for my setup. I had let myself guid by Google's AI mode, isolating the device drivers from the Linux host and adding them to the XP system. Unfortunately, on my laptop the Firewire ExpressCard seems to hang on the same PCI bus as some other required devices and a complete isolation was impossible, so the VM did not start after handing over this PCI bus. On a different system this could still a way to go, but at least for me (Kubuntu with KVM/virtual machine manager + Windows 10 VM, on a Thinkpad T540p with Startech Firewire 400 ExpressCard) this wasn't working.

Thanks for reporting back. Reading what you wrote, it seems to work differently than I expected. I thought the VM would just expose the to PCI bus to XP, and you still would have to have the native XP driver for the firewire card, but sounds like it is capable in of getting around this. The card you mentioned seems to have native support in XP anyway though.