IBM Flatbed Scanner

[NeXT]

Oh boy, here's a vague one.

So Someone I know has an IBM scanner. It has the square silver logo badge, it's in the two-tone light/dark grey IBM plastics of the PS/2 era, it uses a nice green fluorescent tube so it's a monochrome scanner and the platen itself moved back and fourth, not the scanning head and lamp. That I can tell IBM called it the Flatbed Scanner but as of right now I'm several hours away from it so I can't recall off the top of my head the proper model number.
There is like, nothing on the internet about this thing. There isn't even any pictures. A typical IBM peripheral I guess. That I can however find is that it interfaced with your host computer using a Microchannel card which confirms it's a PS/2 era machine. Just because of the absurdity and to photograph the hell out of it I'm tempted to buy it however the interface card is not included. I need some second opinions here before I buy what might end up being a doorstop. Has anyone heard of this thing before?

 

[krebizfan]

Sounds like the IBM 3117 (sometimes referred to as the PageScanner). That and a sheet feed counterpart (IBM 3118 ) were introduced in 1987. I think there was a refresh of the line in 1990.

Wasn't just for Microchannel; there was an equivalent specialized 8-bit ISA card for use with XT and AT. Or one could attach it to the serial port but that needed a different addon.

http://www.1000bit.it/ad/bro/brochures.asp?id=2 includes a scan of the advertising for it.

 

[NeXT]

Yes, that's the one!
Hmm, so yes it seems there were ISA and MCA variants both named the 3117 Adapter Card/A. Again we dive into Google and there's just about nothing covering that online but we do find both the ADF and Of the IBM 3119 Scanner Adapter/A on MCAmafia. No additional details on that ability to connect to other high speed adapter cards though however it seems that the 3119 looks identical to the 3117. Humorously though Sears has a page on the thing, complete with a diagram and FRU numbers for each component but of course, they do not (and probably never did) have it in stock.