Using an Adaptec PowerDomain 2930 SCSI Card in Mac OS X with my Nikon LS-2000 Film Scanner

[Mac84]

Hello everyone,

I recently installed my Adaptec PowerDomain 2930 SCSI card in my PowerMac G4 (MDD Dual 867MHz) in order to use my Nikon LS-2000 slide/negative scanner. I spent quite some time figuring this out, so I figured I'd share this adventure to help anyone out in the future.

I've been using this scanner on my G3 B&W with Mac OS 8.6. However this combination of hardware and old Nikon software lead to some frequent crashes, so I wanted to use VueScan on a newer Mac OS X machine to make things more efficient. This meant finding a Mac OS X compatible SCSI card.

Adaptec made quite a lot of SCSI cards for both Macs and PCs, some of them are thankfully Mac OS X compatible. However some require drivers to work. I did have a bit of trouble getting it to work wit my Mac. So here is what I figured out...

Thankfully Microchip (who I suppose acquired Adaptec) still has the drivers and manuals online for a lot of their cards. Here is their drive page for the 2930 (link). I picked up this G4 tower at a yard sale in 2018 and it still had a hard drive with a copy of Leopard installed. Although the drivers are on the Microchip website, the Mac OS X drivers don't have any compatibility or system requirements notes! All that is listed is a version number and a release date, so all I could do is guess what it would work with.

I knew Leopard may be pushing things, but I figured I'd try. Without drivers the "PCI Cards" section of the Apple System Profiler showed that no driver was installed for the SCSI Card. So I downloaded the v1.1 (Feb 2002) driver and attempted to install it, but the installation failed. I tried to be smart and install the driver manually, but that resulted in a lovely error upon startup.

So I busted out my Tiger install DVD and installed it on my G4. After using Software Update and waiting 3+ hours for the frozen update to finish "optimizing" my system, I performed a hard reboot and proceeded to reinstall v1.1 of the SCSI card drivers. Thankfully I did not receive an error upon startup. Although sadly Tiger's version of Apple System Profiler doesn't have a "Driver Installed" column in the PCI Card section. So I pressed on and launched a PowerPC copy of VueScan (9.0.x) and my scanner sprang to life! So I can confirm that version 1.1 of this driver works well with Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger".

So based on the above, I can assume the following (based on the release dates of the various Mac OS X versions):
The version 1.0.2 driver (with a date of October 2001), is likely compatible with Mac OS X 10.1 "Puma" (released in September of 2001) and maybe 10.2 "Jaguar".
The version 1.1 of the driver (with a date of February 2002), is likely compatible with 10.2 "Jaguar", 10.3 "Panther", and seems to work fine in 10.4 "Tiger".

The Nikon LS-2000 isn't the fastest scanner, but the quality is well worth any time spent scanning in film at 2700 dpi. One of the scanners I bought online came with a "bonus" SCSI to FireWire adapter... and what a bonus that was! So I'm able to use the scanner (with VueScan) on my MacBook Pro while using another on my G4 to tackle on larger scan jobs. Sadly the SF-200 batch slide loader attachment goes for $500+ on eBay, so this will have to do for now.

And as a thank you for reading this, here are some non-retouched scans (and JPEG converted) photos for you all to check out, courtesy of my father and his camera in the 1970's.

 

[Drake]

Oh man! The quality of these slides on Fujichrome? stunning!
I indulged in some of the last rolls of Kodachrome a few years back and made a process to develop it at home (not an easy task).
The results are beautiful, I really do miss some of these old films.

 

[MindThreat]

Love it! Also, that last scan is my favorite for sure, very cool capture. Hard to believe it's 1970, he must have kept those slides in great condition!

You're in for a lot of fun with that setup I'm all out of slides to scan with mine.

 

[JDJ]

I recently installed an Adaptec 29160N PCD card into my Mac G5 running Leopard (10.5.8) I have successfully installed the driver and am using VueScan. It seems to recognize the scanner but when I put in the MA-20 adapter into my LS-2000 Nikon Scanner and put a slide in it says, "The scanner is not ready. insert film into scanner. I have inserted the slide but it does not recognize it. Any ideas of what is needed?

 

[Mac84]

Interesting. Do you have any other SCSI devices to try? Did the driver you install specifically support Leopard? Do you have another adapter for the LS-2000 to try? I assume you've checked all the SCSI voodoo regarding termination, etc.

 

[JDJ]

Thank you for responding. No, I do not have any other SCSI devices to try. The driver I installed did not specifically support Leopard. It was hard finding a driver. But from your posting I visited the Microchip page and downloaded the apd2930_X_v11.hqx driver. However, when I installed it, the Adpatec 299160N PCI card was not recognized. Somehow I found another driver - apd29160x_X_v12a.hqx. I had a difficult time opening this since it was a Sufit archive. I was finally able to unstuffit and then install the driver. Now the card was recognized! Progress it seemed. However, when I try to scan I get the message to insert film into scanner. I retried everything today and now I wonder whether VueScan is actually recognizing the Ma-20. Seems that it should appear in the menus including Profile Scanner. Do you know if there is a driver specifically that supports Leopard?
I also had a challenge finding the correct version of VueScan. The one that finally opened and I am working with is 9.0.96

 

[JDJ]

Further to above. Today I downloaded SilverFast SE 6.6 (Demo) specifically for OS 10.5. It does clearly recognize the MA-20 (the name appears) but when I try the scan I get the same message that there is no film in it. "An error occurred at the start of the scanning process. No Adapter/Film found!"

 

[Mac84]

Further to above. Today I downloaded SilverFast SE 6.6 (Demo) specifically for OS 10.5. It does clearly recognize the MA-20 (the name appears) but when I try the scan I get the same message that there is no film in it. "An error occurred at the start of the scanning process. No Adapter/Film found!"

I'm glad to hear you have made some progress. Besides the drivers you found, I cannot find anything better for Leopard. A lot of cards got support around Panther and Tiger, most (to my knowledge) didn't get the same support in Leopard, or they "just work" or "just don't".

Hm, maybe it's something simple? Are the pins on the Nikon slide mount adapter making a clear connection? There is a sensor in the slide mount that detects slides, I suppose maybe that may be dusty, etc? I assume you've tried re-seating it, etc.

Do you have any other adapters (film etc) for the Nikon? I'm just curious if it will operate but with a different adapter.

 

[JDJ]

Where do I find or see the pins on the Nikon slide mount adapter?
Where is the sensor that detects slides?
I don't understand how the unit is supposed to work in terms of pin connections and sensors, so I am in a fog as to what to look for.
Yes, I have tried reseating the adapter many times. I have two MA-20 adapters and have tried both.
I also have the LS-2000 scanning unit as well as the LS-30 (also labeled in front as the Nikon Coolscan III). Same results no matter what different combinations I use. I greatly appreciate your communicating with me on this problem