[nmglug] "all-in-one" printer puzzler

[Lee Einer]

I hooked up an "all-in-one" printer (Epson CX6400 usb printer and
scanner) to a PC running Mepis 6.0 at our local Peace & Justice center
recently. The printer works flawlessly. The scanner is another story.

First time around, the Scanner autodetected and worked great, even
scanning into OpenOffice documents without a hitch. But the second time
I fired up the PC, the damn thing would not work and I have had buzzard
luck getting it to work since.

The device is read at the USB port. xsane-find-scanner detects the
scanner immediately. But scanimage -L simply hangs, even if I run it as
root, and neither xsane nor scanimage will activate the scanner.

The all-in-one unit has an option for either scan to memory card, scan
to PC or scan to e-mail. The scanner will not accept any option now
except scan to memory card.

The fact that it worked the first time out tells me that the problem is
not an issue of configuration of the PC. But what is causing the problem
and how do I fix?

Lee