Mustek 1200 UB Plus on Mac OS X Snow Leopard

By : Julien Herbin Email : julien@ecranbleu.org
Don't hesitate to contact me in case you need any information. Please inform me of any mistake I may have done.
Last modified : 2009-09-13

If you're browsing this page, you may be desperately trying to make your good old Mustesk 1200 UB Plus scanner work on Mac OS X. Well, I have a bad and a good news for you: no Mac OS X driver is available for this scanner, BUT with a bit of patiente, you can make it work thanks to SANE! Just follow these steps:

Sane packages installation

Follow this link http://www.ellert.se/twain-sane/ and download/install these packages:

libusb
SANE Backends
SANE Preference Pane
TWAIN Sane Interface

Driver installation

Open Terminal and copy / paste this line (you will be asked for you administrator password):

curl 'http://www.meier-geinitz.de/sane/gt68xx-backend/firmware/sbfw.usb' > /tmp/sbfw.usb
sudo mv /tmp/sbfw.usb /usr/local/share/sane/gt68xx/PS1fw.usb
sudo chown root /usr/local/share/sane/gt68xx/PS1fw.usb

Edit this file /usr/local/etc/sane.d/gt68xx.conf (need admin priviledges), to transform this piece of text from:

# Mustek ScanExpress 1200 UB Plus:
#override "mustek-scanexpress-1200-ub-plus"

to:

# Mustek ScanExpress 1200 UB Plus:
override "mustek-scanexpress-1200-ub-plus"

Scan!

You should be up and running for a first 300 DPI color scan from the terminal:

scanimage --format=tiff --mode=Color --resolution=300 > ~/Desktop/my_scan.tiff

Check out scanimage's man page for more options!

man scanimage

One more thing

Alright, I know... It's not very convenient to scan from the command line. If you wan to use your scanner within your applications, just add the "Sane scanner" as a device in the printer/fax preference pannel and you'll be able to use it much more easily. Have fun!