MAN pages

[Zscoundrel]

I have noticed a tendency in the MAN pages to refer people to the system 
administrator.  This ends up as a really nasty catch-22 when I am trying 
to figure something out because I *AM* the freaking' system administrator. 

What is the point of looking stuff up in the man pages when it says "you 
may need to refer to your system administrator for the names of such 
devices. . . "?  If I KNEW the freakin' names I would be using them and 
doing productive work and not wasting time with the MAN pages - SHEESH

I encountered this scenario while trying to get a UMAX1220P scanner 
working under fedora core2.  All the google stuff is really shallow and 
the MAN and INFO stuff don't give me much to go on.  Has anyone got any 
experience with this and could you throw me a lifeline???  It is an old 
parallel port connected scanner - but it is all I have available right 
now.  I don't plan to use it much and I would REALLY hate to pop for a 
USB connected scanner until I see some light at the end of the tunnel. 

Any suggestions???