Actually, SCSI emulation drivers for the Phamtom636 scanner may work under Windows XP. It is my experience, as I own one of these scanners since '98, and I found no real reason to switch to a newer one till now.

They are quite botchy, though.

If the scanner driver and software installs a demon to check the driver connection (mine used to, but thankfully to some superior power the disc got scratched just there and lost it), that is something TO GET RID OF as soon as possible.

It does not provide any real functionality, a part to guarantee that you cannot reboot the scanner without also having to reboot the pc, wich may be a problem.

The scanner MUST be in function before the computer boots.

XP WILL show the classic request of drivers for a new hardware, that must be blissfully ignored. Select Cancel, and go away.

After that, it may be advisable to switch the scanner off and than back on, after a couple of seconds.

It is a glitch present on some of them (actually, mine and a couple of other I saw) but they work badly - very noisely, and switching-mixing colours so that black is read as a bright yellow - if they are not "reset" after the computer's boot (which is the main reason to get rid of the connection control demon: you may need to reboot the scanner, but the demon would force you to reboot also the PC).

After that, the scanner will work exactly as it did when it was new.

Which means, it will lock the system bus of an actual AMD 5GHz exactly like it used to do with the Pentium300, slowing it down to the speed of a snail, and it will take its time in doing but the most trivial scansions (parallel port speed is just a fraction of the speed of even the most humble USB 1.0).

Which, in the end, is probably the reason why Microtek didn't bother to devlop a driver for newer Windows version: the thing is, in her own right, a dinosaur.