This, to me, was the second-scariest part of it (after having to wire RS-232 connector pinouts individually depending on modem brand, printer brand and serial-port board).

Thankfully, for those of us still needing to export to and import from paper-based documents, there has been substantial if quiet progress that is very welcomed. Getting back into this world, I discovered that in scanning -- much like in printing -- there are way fewer diverging standards for communications to the devices than there used to be. Notably, I learned about the move of both SANE and CUPS to "driverless" support for scanners and printers respectively.

Almost all scanning devices now support Apple's eSCL (AirScan) and/or Windows' WSD protocols, and as such have been trivially supported by SANE with minimal setup since 2020. This worked flawlessly for the scanner half of my Brother multifunction unit. (Hugh, I have a CZUR scanner too but haven't used it in ages. I'd be interested to know if their scanners can support either of the above protocols.)

Similarly, the old PPD drivers for CUPS have been deprecated since 2019 in favour of "driverless" printing for any device that supports AirPrint or IPP.  Unless you need a device feature unsupported by these protocols, both SANE and CUPS strongly recommend installing (or switching to) driverless devices. The need for vendor-specific drivers is vastly reduced; companies like Lexmark and Canon which used to play stupid driver games which rendered them Linux-hostile, have fallen into line and are thus as well supported now as Brother (which has always been Linux-friendly).

This may be old news to some, but new to me since I haven't looked at any of this for at least a decade.
All this progress.... just as the need for such devices is on the wane. Better late than never I guess.

- Evan