Yay.
On my old computer I had an actual SCSI connection to my scanner, so I was familiar with the generic SCSI driver for use with scanners.
This ‘new’ scanner produces much better pictures than my old one, at a given resolution.
Now to start scanning type specimens....
Oh, also I discovered that there is now GNU ocrad for ‘libre’ OCR. There was already GOCR, but in the one case I tried ocrad did a better job. I’m reluctant to start OCR work again, though, because in the past digitizing books has been bad for my hands, due to all the correction and tagging work.
Update: On a different occasion, gocr did better than ocrad did. Trial version of Vuescan did an awful job by comparison, and froze up afterwards.