dot dot is dead

My Epson Perfection 3200 Photo (Firewire) scanner gave me around a thousand finished scans, costing approximately $0.35 each, over four years. Now it won't turn on. My scanner would have saved you from this other documentation:

 - Command: prcs execute [option ...] [project [file-or-dir ...]] [--
          command [arg ...]]
     ADDITIONAL OPTIONS: `-r', `-P', `--pre', `--all', `--pipe'
     `--match PATTERN', `--not PATTERN'

     Execute `COMMAND ARG ...,' suitably modified as described below,
     for the name of each file and directory in FILE-OR-DIR in the
     specified version, filtered by any `--match' and `--not'
     operators as described below.  This elaborate command is
     intended to facilitate efficient, open-ended extension of the
     functions of PRCS.  Each directory, whether or not explicitly
     named in the project, is included once, either in pre- or
     post-order.

     With the `--all' option, COMMAND is executed once.  Otherwise,
     it is executed once per file name.

     The PATTERN options filter the selected files.  To be selected,
     the entry in the Files attribute for a given file must satisfy
     the `--match' pattern (if any) and not satisfy  the `--not'
     pattern, if any.  Each pattern is a regular expression; an entry
     satisfies the pattern if either the name or any of the `:'
     options matches the pattern.

     For each execution of COMMAND, PRCS first replaces the following
     strings wherever they appear in COMMAND and in each ARG:

    `{}'
          Replaced by the name of the file.  With the `--all' option,
          replaced by the sequence of all selected file names,
          separated by "unquoted blanks" (that is, blanks that divide
          the replacement string into separate arguments).

    `{options}'
          Replaced by a string consisting of all colon-options
          applicable to the file (*note Files attribute::), separated
          by "quoted blanks" (that is, blanks that do not divide the
          replacement string into separate arguments).  If a
          directory is not explicitly named in the project file, it
          is listed with a `:implicit-directory' option, whether or
          not it appears separately in the Files attribute.  These
          directories appear whether or not the files containing them
          were on the command line (otherwise, it would be impossible
          to get just the directories).  The project file is included
          with the `:project-file' attribute.  With the `--all'
          option, all of these colon-option strings are concatenated
          together, with the strings for different files separated by
          unquoted blanks.

    `{file}'
          The name of a file containing the contents of the
          appropriate version of the file.  Unless the internal file
          identifier is null (which can only happen when there is no
          `-r' option, so that the working version is specified),
          this is the name of a temporary file containing a
          checked-out copy of the appropriate version, which is
          deleted after COMMAND completes.  With a null internal file
          identifier, `{file}' is the same as `{}'.  It is the empty
          string for a directory or a file carrying the `:symlink'
          option.  With the `--all' option, all of these file names
          are concatenated together, separated by unquoted blanks.

     (In contexts where curly braces are special to your shell, you
     will have to escape them.)  After these substitutions, PRCS
     invokes COMMAND, which must be an executable file.  It looks for
     COMMAND in the same directories as the shell (using the PATH
     environment variable).  When `--' and what follows are omitted,
     they default to

          -- /bin/echo {}

     which simply echoes the names of all files and directories in the
     selected version, one per line.

     One small glitch: `prcs execute' uses the current directory in
     effect when it is invoked as the current directory seen by
     COMMAND.  This is true, even when the PROJECT operand specifies
     a subdirectory.  For example,

          % cd /usr/users/foo
          % prcs execute D/P -- pwd

     will print `/usr/users/foo' once for each file listed in
     `/usr/users/foo/D/P.prj', and not `/usr/users/foo/D', as the
     general description of the PROJECT operand might otherwise
     suggest (*note Specifying Projects::).  This allows you to do
     something like the following:

          % ln -s . P-1.0
          % tar -cvf P-1.0.tar `prcs execute --not :.*directory P-1.0`

     for making tarfiles containing all files in a project in an
     appropriately named subdirectory for distribution.

     If the `--pipe' option is present, then the contents of the file
     (as would be contained in the file named by `{file}') is
     supplied as the standard input.  The `--pipe' and `--all'
     options are incompatible.  Any ARG whose replacement contains
     unquoted blanks (introduced by the `--all' option) is divided at
     those blanks into separate arguments (even in the case where
     substitution results in a null string, that null string will be
     broken out as a separate argument).  Each of the resulting
     arguments, is passed directly to the program specified by
     COMMAND as a single string, with no further processing by any
     shell.

     With the `--all' option,  PRCS will invoke COMMAND only once.
     The order of the lists of arguments replacing each pattern in
     COMMAND is consistent, so that, for example, the options for the
     first file name in the replacement for `{}' is the first string
     in the replacement for `{options}'.  For example, if a project
     contains the files `A', `B/Q', and `B/R', then

          prcs execute --all . -- foo -a{}-b "{options}"

     will execute (in effect) the single command

          foo -aA B/Q B/R B-b "" "" "" ":directory"

     With the `--pre' (for pre-order) option the directory name is
     listed first, then the non-directory file names within that
     directory, then the subdirectories and their contents.
     Otherwise, subdirectories and their contents are listed first,
     then the names of its non-directory files, then the name of the
     directory itself.

     With `-n', the command prints the commands that will be executed
     without actually executing them.