and the electronics are broken. as far as I can tell, these have two states - “the controller is broken” and “the controller isn’t broken yet”. in light of this I am seriously considering building my own control electronics
I’ve had it apart to do some basic troubleshooting (reseat all the cables, make sure the PSU is working properly, all that stuff) and there really isn’t that much to it - it’s got three stepper motors, half a dozen photointerrupters, a button, a status LED, four LEDs for the lamp that have their own drivers, and the giant 3-line CCD. I know how to deal with everything in that list except for the CCD, and from what I’ve read the CCD shouldn’t be that difficult to work with assuming I can find (or guess) the pinout, and I’m fairly familiar with the scanner’s operation, self-test sequence, and calibration procedures.
I still have a bit more work I want to do with the original controller before I call it quits but I’m getting into “need original Nikon factory diagnostic tools” territory here so it’s probably coming