plustek@linuxhacker.org

    FWIW, I have been running several MBs with the PP set to ECP+EPP in 
the BIOS, for my 9636T scanner, for some time (well over a year). I need 
to do this to have the scanner work with Windows under VMWARE. I use 
Mandrake, which has support for dma PP transfers (needed for ECP mode, 
as well as an interrupt for the PP) turned on by default in the stock 
kernel. Other distros, in particular Red Hat, do not have this turned 
on; you have to recompile the kernel with this option enabled (This info 
comes from some reports on the parallel port mailing list). Unless there 
is something strange about a particular scanner (the older ones, 
probably), if you have ECP+EPP mode enabled in the BIOS and have the 
proper support in the kernel, the scanner should work fine with this 
setting.

    Kevin