the big problem with my technology questions and hacking impulses is that they're all based on making 15 year old technology work with modern technology. i got our ancient a3 scanner to work with mac a long while back just by downloading the latest drivers, but on windows 10 it just sounds like it's tearing itself apart
i feel like on the old internet there was probably a guy with an angelfire page about how to write a whole TWAIN driver. on the new internet i find nothing but abandoned forum posts asking the same question, OR questionable third party driver suppliers trying to get me to download their updater app
tbh i feel like the internet as a whole used to be better at answering questions. maybe that weird hobbyist angelfire page is still out there but the search engine game has been effectively fucked by commercial SEO 🙃
@wolfteeth for "old skool" electronics (especially searching out datasheets for 1980s era components) it has become horrendous, so much is hidden/duplicated under ad ridden rubbish or even paywalls or other clearly bad things that demand some info like an email address (for spam) or registration before handing over the info (and you are not even sure if that might be a good PDF file or something with malware)
@vfrmedia yeah even for the stuff i was looking for data on (an old flatbed scanner) basically i found a bunch of third party driver sites that wanted me to download their app to get presumably the same outdated first-party driver i already had