Transferring 16mm film - telecine project

I have about 20 rolls of 16mm film dating from 1949, so I figured I'd better get the film transferred to digital soon, before the images deteriorate. This blog will describe my (ongoing) project. So far I have an Epson 4490 Photo Scanner ($100 from Amazon) and I am building a film transfer system. I will be using the parallel port to send signals to a stepper motor driver (called EasyDriver $15 from Sparkfun) . I have succeeded in using Python to control the stepper so all the main elements are in place. After I acquire the images I will flipcard them to create a movie. I know only a little bit about electronics and Python but there are some good boards for help there. Since I couldn't locate a sprocket I have built a conveyance system that slides the film by means of a modded Canon scanner. Many of the parts are scrounged up from old devices. Some solenoids from a old cheapo cassette player and my transistors were just pulled from some old stereos and VCRs. This explains why some of my components are a bit off. I really didn't want to wait for parts to be shipped to me so I just built with what I had on hand, except for the breadboards and the EasyDriver for the stepper motor.