>[ Zoli built an optical scanner from an old drum-type facsimile
>[ machine, and I believe he has the honor to be the first to
>[ transcribe music rolls to computer files by this method.  -- Robbie

We were in fact experimenting with modifying a hand-held scanner (back
in 1991), which had all the necessary electronics including the line-CCD
sensor (about 2000 pixels) and the position encoding shaft.  This project
was never successfully finished.  Finally we hired a professional company
to do the scanning for about $15 per roll.  We got the data in TIFF G4
format on CD-ROM.  That's convenient!

However, lately I found a couple of relatively cheap scanners, feed-
through type, A4 size.  (For example, Genius, AVision and HP are making
such for about $300).  These have the stepping motor circuits as well,
thus they would be even better for modifying them into a roll reader.
The biggest problem is that the optical path needs to be modified to be
able to scan larger widths (the resolution would be enough even this way
-- about 200 dpi).

Unfortunately I have no contacts in any of these companies to get the
necessary documentation from them.  It is also a question whether their
software drivers could be taught to scan continuously.   I know about the
TWAIN interface, but I didn't take the time to check it out.  (If the
processing software were built using standard interfaces it could use
any kind of scanner.  So why not use existing standards supported by
many manufacturers?)

I feel that video-based page-scanner solutions are more difficult to
modify to scan rolls since they usually don't have a transport mechanism.

Zoli Janosy

 [ It took Jody mere minutes to alter the optical path of the Canon
 [ scanner, followed by many weeks of software development and 
 [ modification of the scanner firmware.  Wayne Stahnke had similar
 [ experiences with his scanner development.   -- Robbie