6 ms·

Thunderscan: A clever device transforms a printer into a scanner (2004)

164 points by dtgriscom 1y ago

downboots 1y ago
On the topic of using things beyond their intended purpose: kitchen scale + 3D printer = force gauge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciBrPYYRMYM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciBrPYYRMYM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_fixedness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_fixedness
gnfargbl 1y ago
100,000 units sold, software royalty of $7.50 a unit -- I make that a little over $2M in today's money. Not bad for what seems to have been about two months work.
- relaxing 1y ago
  That really is the dream, isn’t it. To find work that is interesting, impactful, that you are uniquely qualified to do, and to be compensated handsomely for it. It was probably easier to come by in 1987. Nowadays if you have a unique idea in computing, there’s 40 years’ worth of computing professionals around to step in and take the job.
- sgerenser 1y ago
  When I first saw the $7.50 royalty, I was thinking he’d make a decent payday as long as they sell 10K-20K of the things. Very surprised they sold 100K seems like a lot for the mid-80s for a relatively niche Mac accessory.
  - dsr_ 1y ago
    Everyone with a Mac had an ImageWriter printer; the scanner attachment was, by far, the cheapest way to add scanning capability. Many people bought them to add the capability, not because they needed them already. A little later, the LaserWriter printer became the first generally affordable laser printer. But it was affordable only if you were rich or had a business case for it. The sub-thousand dollar laser printer took quite a few more years.
    - kalleboo 1y ago
      And even though networking was envisioned from the start of the Mac, Apple basically had to rush to finish AppleTalk networking in time for the release of the LaserWriter since it was so expensive it was assumed the only way anyone could justify the purchase price was to share it with an office workgroup rather than connect to a single workstation. It took 2 more years for Apple to finally introduce file sharing over their own network.
davidferguson 1y ago
I stumbled across the article about the ThunderScan in about 2012 when looking for info about ImageWriter II upgrades, and have been slightly obsessed ever since. It's such a brilliant idea - a higher resolution scanner, that was far lower in cost than its competitors, achieved by reusing the paper transport that most customers already had. I'm lucky enough to own two working ThunderScans now (and one third one that I needed the software driver from). They work exactly as advertised, and it's a joy to see them zip across the page, digitising line by line. The software by Hertzfeld is another joy to use. The scrolling, which Hertzfeld calls "inertial scrolling" in that article, is now familiar to us all who have used touchscreen devices. It's funny to think that the feature that wowed so many at the 2007 iPhone launch actually existed all the way back in 1984, designed by one of the key creators of the Macintosh. I wish there were more creative hacks like this - I just know that if a company tried to do something similar today, the printer manufacturer would instantly roll out an update to break this functionality.
- cornholio 1y ago
  I wonder why the system didn't caught on and why it's not used today by manufacturers of multi-functional printers. Seems like a huge opportunity to use the existing paper handling mechanism - with an autofeeder, a feature most flatbeds lack! - and get a more compact device. The entire device consists of a single, cheap CMOS image sensor, a lens focused at a fixed distance and a RGB led. Everything else, stitching the resulting scanbands, correcting for mechanical and optical distortions, etc. is all in software. The native optical resolution you could expect from, say, a 1080x720 px sensor would be something like 2400 DPI. The only downside i can think is that you can't scan IDs, passports etc. and the location near the inkjet head tends to get dirty.
  - poppo 1y ago
    You can get cheap, compact scanners that just feed the paper through instead of laying it on a flat pane of glass. Almost the same thing except not multifunctional and with a page width sensor instead of one that would scan back and forth.
  - bayindirh 1y ago
VirgilShelton 1y ago
Great, now I learn about this when I used to have printers back in the 80's , 90's and 00's!
sgarland 1y ago
Man, I love stuff like this! The hardware aspect of these things is always the most impressive to me. I make plenty of small software tools, as I’m sure many HN readers do, but designing and building bespoke hardware that interacts with said software is on another level entirely - especially considering they didn’t have 3D printers.
mjd 1y ago
I had one. It was a great product. I could never have afforded a flatbed, but I had an ImageWriter and plenty of time. Early on I used it to make a picture of Madonna with a fish stuck through her head.
EvanAnderson 1y ago
Neat! I remember this thing from when I was a kid. We didn't have an Imagewriter printer so it wasn't an option for me. Having a scanner back in those days would have been amazing. There is a nice reverse engineering of the Thunderscan here: https://beefchicken.com/retro/thunderscan/ https://beefchicken.com/retro/thunderscan/
empressplay 1y ago
My school had one, it wasn't perfect and there were occasionally gaps between scanned lines but it let us scan in photographs and newspaper clippings for local history projects.
relaxing 1y ago
I definitely downloaded pornography in the 90’s with a “Thunderscan” watermark on the corner. Was that a feature of the software? Or did the person scanning add it to brag about their rig, I wonder.
JKCalhoun 1y ago
Another oddity re. the ImageWriter. There was even a color ribbon for the printer as I recall. The early Mac, even though black and white, had some very primitive color attributes buried in the "Mac Toolbox" (ROM) that, while not allowing you to display color on those devices, could in fact send simple color to the ImageWriter with said ribbon. I feel like MacDraw (or some other lesser-known app — not MacPaint) exposed this functionality.
- skyking40v 1y ago
  I vaguely remember that AppleWriter on the Apple IIe exposed the escape sequence it used for character-mode print commands like bold and underline to the user. You could change the command to escape sequence maps right from inside the program. I re-mapped bold to cyan, and underline to magenta just to see magic color come from that printer. That one day in 1996 was probably the only time that printer ever printed in color, and probably my first time to see a printer print in color.
- hoistbypetard 1y ago
  I remember feeling like the color ribbon was so eye-wateringly expensive that we bought *one* and kept it in a zip lock bag except when we wanted a color print. Usually from The Print Shop. I was young (aged 10 - 15), and it probably wasn't really that expensive. My parents were willing to help with equipment, but we had to pay for consumables ourselves. So any ink, floppies, telephone fees for dialing into BBSs were on us, and we were as stingy about them as you'd expect from kids with limited opportunities to earn money.
- kalleboo 1y ago
  There are still people making reproduction ImageWriter color ribbon cartridges for retrocomputing enthusiasts! https://maceffects.com/products/apple-imagewriter-ii-color-ribbon-cartridge https://maceffects.com/products/apple-imagewriter-ii-color-r...
kazinator 1y ago
Should be [2004/1984]
nityasha 1y ago
Wow, this is a clever hack! Turning a printer into a scanner is such a simple yet elegant solution — reminds me how creative people can get with hardware limitations. Makes me wonder what other “hidden” functionalities old devices could have if we just experiment a bit.
skyking40v 1y ago
I was aware of Canon's mid-90s attempt at the same thing: Canon IS-32 Color Image Scanner Cartridge. While the Canon may be the first color-capable unit, it's interesting to see it wasn't the first ever!
D13Fd 1y ago
This whole article great, but the best part is when he just casually drops that he invented inertial scrolling 20+ years before the iPhone.
brianpaul 1y ago
IIRC, one of the 8-bit Atari magazines had an article describing a similar setup back in the mid/later 80s. Basically, put a photoresistor in a shroud (I used the cap from a Bic pen and some electrical tape), attach it to the dot matrix print head and wire it to the Atari joystick port's analog/paddle input. Place a bright light over the printer. Then the software told the printer to move the print head back and forth while it read the port value. The image quality was terrible but it was a fun project.
- fallous 1y ago
  If you think that resolution is terrible, you should've tried my lightpen-based "scanner." ;)
msephton 1y ago
Thunderscan was used to scan the Japanese woodblock print permed by Steve Jobs that Susan Kate later touched up for the MacPaint box and manual art.
BryantD 1y ago
Loved the Thunderscan back in the day. In college I worked at a little computer store in Harvard Square that didn’t bother to stock real scanners — students who could afford them had better places to buy gear. One day this nice guy came in looking for a scanner and I did my absolute best to sell him on a Thunderscan based on the price point. “I’m not telling you the quality is as high as a flat bed scanner, but it’s so affordable!” After he left and after the store owner stopped laughing, she explained that I’d been trying to sell Robin Williams on the basis of price. I like to think he enjoyed being treated like a guy off the street.
- grepfru_it 1y ago
  I sat next to a random person on a flight once. Everyone walking on the plane was gawking at him, shaking his hand, while I sat unphased working on my ability to make a voip call over the new wifi system on united airlines. I eventually looked up who was sitting next to me and found out it was Daryl McDaniels (DMC of Run DMC fame). We both happened to check bags, so I walked up to him and actually apologized for not giving him the same attention that everyone else was on the plane. He laughed and said it felt great to have a flight where the people around him didn't talk his ear off. He gave me a signed autograph and his phone number and then we both went our separate ways. I just found his autograph while cleaning last night.. now after seeing this comment, I'm going to give him a call tomorrow :)

164 points by dtgriscom 1y ago

On the topic of using things beyond their intended purpose: kitchen scale + 3D printer = force gauge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciBrPYYRMYM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciBrPYYRMYM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_fixedness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_fixedness

gnfargbl 1y ago

100,000 units sold, software royalty of $7.50 a unit -- I make that a little over $2M in today's money. Not bad for what seems to have been about two months work.

relaxing 1y ago
That really is the dream, isn’t it. To find work that is interesting, impactful, that you are uniquely qualified to do, and to be compensated handsomely for it. It was probably easier to come by in 1987. Nowadays if you have a unique idea in computing, there’s 40 years’ worth of computing professionals around to step in and take the job.
sgerenser 1y ago
When I first saw the $7.50 royalty, I was thinking he’d make a decent payday as long as they sell 10K-20K of the things. Very surprised they sold 100K seems like a lot for the mid-80s for a relatively niche Mac accessory.
- dsr_ 1y ago
  Everyone with a Mac had an ImageWriter printer; the scanner attachment was, by far, the cheapest way to add scanning capability. Many people bought them to add the capability, not because they needed them already. A little later, the LaserWriter printer became the first generally affordable laser printer. But it was affordable only if you were rich or had a business case for it. The sub-thousand dollar laser printer took quite a few more years.
  - kalleboo 1y ago
    And even though networking was envisioned from the start of the Mac, Apple basically had to rush to finish AppleTalk networking in time for the release of the LaserWriter since it was so expensive it was assumed the only way anyone could justify the purchase price was to share it with an office workgroup rather than connect to a single workstation. It took 2 more years for Apple to finally introduce file sharing over their own network.

davidferguson 1y ago

I stumbled across the article about the ThunderScan in about 2012 when looking for info about ImageWriter II upgrades, and have been slightly obsessed ever since. It's such a brilliant idea - a higher resolution scanner, that was far lower in cost than its competitors, achieved by reusing the paper transport that most customers already had. I'm lucky enough to own two working ThunderScans now (and one third one that I needed the software driver from). They work exactly as advertised, and it's a joy to see them zip across the page, digitising line by line. The software by Hertzfeld is another joy to use. The scrolling, which Hertzfeld calls "inertial scrolling" in that article, is now familiar to us all who have used touchscreen devices. It's funny to think that the feature that wowed so many at the 2007 iPhone launch actually existed all the way back in 1984, designed by one of the key creators of the Macintosh. I wish there were more creative hacks like this - I just know that if a company tried to do something similar today, the printer manufacturer would instantly roll out an update to break this functionality.

cornholio 1y ago
I wonder why the system didn't caught on and why it's not used today by manufacturers of multi-functional printers. Seems like a huge opportunity to use the existing paper handling mechanism - with an autofeeder, a feature most flatbeds lack! - and get a more compact device. The entire device consists of a single, cheap CMOS image sensor, a lens focused at a fixed distance and a RGB led. Everything else, stitching the resulting scanbands, correcting for mechanical and optical distortions, etc. is all in software. The native optical resolution you could expect from, say, a 1080x720 px sensor would be something like 2400 DPI. The only downside i can think is that you can't scan IDs, passports etc. and the location near the inkjet head tends to get dirty.
- poppo 1y ago
  You can get cheap, compact scanners that just feed the paper through instead of laying it on a flat pane of glass. Almost the same thing except not multifunctional and with a page width sensor instead of one that would scan back and forth.
- bayindirh 1y ago

VirgilShelton 1y ago

Great, now I learn about this when I used to have printers back in the 80's , 90's and 00's!

sgarland 1y ago

Man, I love stuff like this! The hardware aspect of these things is always the most impressive to me. I make plenty of small software tools, as I’m sure many HN readers do, but designing and building bespoke hardware that interacts with said software is on another level entirely - especially considering they didn’t have 3D printers.

mjd 1y ago

I had one. It was a great product. I could never have afforded a flatbed, but I had an ImageWriter and plenty of time. Early on I used it to make a picture of Madonna with a fish stuck through her head.

EvanAnderson 1y ago

Neat! I remember this thing from when I was a kid. We didn't have an Imagewriter printer so it wasn't an option for me. Having a scanner back in those days would have been amazing. There is a nice reverse engineering of the Thunderscan here: https://beefchicken.com/retro/thunderscan/ https://beefchicken.com/retro/thunderscan/

empressplay 1y ago

My school had one, it wasn't perfect and there were occasionally gaps between scanned lines but it let us scan in photographs and newspaper clippings for local history projects.

relaxing 1y ago

I definitely downloaded pornography in the 90’s with a “Thunderscan” watermark on the corner. Was that a feature of the software? Or did the person scanning add it to brag about their rig, I wonder.

JKCalhoun 1y ago

Another oddity re. the ImageWriter. There was even a color ribbon for the printer as I recall. The early Mac, even though black and white, had some very primitive color attributes buried in the "Mac Toolbox" (ROM) that, while not allowing you to display color on those devices, could in fact send simple color to the ImageWriter with said ribbon. I feel like MacDraw (or some other lesser-known app — not MacPaint) exposed this functionality.

skyking40v 1y ago
I vaguely remember that AppleWriter on the Apple IIe exposed the escape sequence it used for character-mode print commands like bold and underline to the user. You could change the command to escape sequence maps right from inside the program. I re-mapped bold to cyan, and underline to magenta just to see magic color come from that printer. That one day in 1996 was probably the only time that printer ever printed in color, and probably my first time to see a printer print in color.
hoistbypetard 1y ago
I remember feeling like the color ribbon was so eye-wateringly expensive that we bought *one* and kept it in a zip lock bag except when we wanted a color print. Usually from The Print Shop. I was young (aged 10 - 15), and it probably wasn't really that expensive. My parents were willing to help with equipment, but we had to pay for consumables ourselves. So any ink, floppies, telephone fees for dialing into BBSs were on us, and we were as stingy about them as you'd expect from kids with limited opportunities to earn money.
kalleboo 1y ago
There are still people making reproduction ImageWriter color ribbon cartridges for retrocomputing enthusiasts! https://maceffects.com/products/apple-imagewriter-ii-color-ribbon-cartridge https://maceffects.com/products/apple-imagewriter-ii-color-r...

kazinator 1y ago

Should be [2004/1984]

nityasha 1y ago

Wow, this is a clever hack! Turning a printer into a scanner is such a simple yet elegant solution — reminds me how creative people can get with hardware limitations. Makes me wonder what other “hidden” functionalities old devices could have if we just experiment a bit.

skyking40v 1y ago

I was aware of Canon's mid-90s attempt at the same thing: Canon IS-32 Color Image Scanner Cartridge. While the Canon may be the first color-capable unit, it's interesting to see it wasn't the first ever!

D13Fd 1y ago

This whole article great, but the best part is when he just casually drops that he invented inertial scrolling 20+ years before the iPhone.

brianpaul 1y ago

IIRC, one of the 8-bit Atari magazines had an article describing a similar setup back in the mid/later 80s. Basically, put a photoresistor in a shroud (I used the cap from a Bic pen and some electrical tape), attach it to the dot matrix print head and wire it to the Atari joystick port's analog/paddle input. Place a bright light over the printer. Then the software told the printer to move the print head back and forth while it read the port value. The image quality was terrible but it was a fun project.

fallous 1y ago
If you think that resolution is terrible, you should've tried my lightpen-based "scanner." ;)

msephton 1y ago

Thunderscan was used to scan the Japanese woodblock print permed by Steve Jobs that Susan Kate later touched up for the MacPaint box and manual art.

BryantD 1y ago

Loved the Thunderscan back in the day. In college I worked at a little computer store in Harvard Square that didn’t bother to stock real scanners — students who could afford them had better places to buy gear. One day this nice guy came in looking for a scanner and I did my absolute best to sell him on a Thunderscan based on the price point. “I’m not telling you the quality is as high as a flat bed scanner, but it’s so affordable!” After he left and after the store owner stopped laughing, she explained that I’d been trying to sell Robin Williams on the basis of price. I like to think he enjoyed being treated like a guy off the street.

grepfru_it 1y ago
I sat next to a random person on a flight once. Everyone walking on the plane was gawking at him, shaking his hand, while I sat unphased working on my ability to make a voip call over the new wifi system on united airlines. I eventually looked up who was sitting next to me and found out it was Daryl McDaniels (DMC of Run DMC fame). We both happened to check bags, so I walked up to him and actually apologized for not giving him the same attention that everyone else was on the plane. He laughed and said it felt great to have a flight where the people around him didn't talk his ear off. He gave me a signed autograph and his phone number and then we both went our separate ways. I just found his autograph while cleaning last night.. now after seeing this comment, I'm going to give him a call tomorrow :)