My output from dmesg | grep usb is:

usb.c: registered new driver usbdevfs
usb.c: registered new driver hub
usb-uhci.c: $Revision: 1.275 $ time 19:48:59 Apr 17 2004
usb-uhci.c: High bandwidth mode enabled
usb-uhci.c: USB UHCI at I/O 0xe000, IRQ 10
usb-uhci.c: Detected 2 ports
usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
usb-uhci.c: v1.275:USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver
usb.c: registered new driver usb-storage
usb.c: USB device 2 (vend/prod 0x45e/0x40) is not claimed by any active driver.
usbdevfs: remount parameter error
usb.c: registered new driver hiddev
usb.c: registered new driver hid
usb-uhci.c: interrupt, status 3, frame# 1468
input: USB HID v1.00 Mouse [Microsoft Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical®] on usb1:2 .0

So it seems to me it knows about the MS mouse, but not the scanner. I've tried starting the system with the scanner attached as well as starting the system and plugging in the scanner after with no different results.

My system is a celeron 400 with 128mb ram with a ZM6mb and a Creative Labs Banshee video. Its got a CD and a CD-RW.

I'm pretty sure the scanner does actually work because it did previously when I was running Windows 2000 -- its not supported under XP and I was hoping that Knoppix would be a good way to get use of it again while learning about Linux.

I appreachiate all the suggestions.