I recently was looking for a cheap way to scan my B&W negatives into the computer, mainly to verify if the composition was really good and the neg worth spending time on in the darkroom. I searched for 2nd hand scanners but best I could do was a Umax for 300 euro (=dollar), which was out of my budget. I then ran into a guy who said he used an ordinairy flatbed scanner and put a halogen building lamp with milk-glass above it. The scan's aren't great but good enough for analyzing. I used the same technique but rather than using milkglass I covered the lamp with a piece of white printerpaper to make it more flexible.
Recently however I decided to put the paper on top of the negative, as it was sunday and I ran out of printing paper accidently, and usally the paper gets wrinkeled when I put it around the lamp. The result was stunning. Together with some dirt on the scanners glass plate (caused by dried moisture) and sepia toning it resulted in the scan that closely resembled old glass negatives, much better than any PS old-style looks.