I don't know how far you got into these ccd's, but when I read some technical stuf on them, I really got discourged. Shifting of charge across the ccd.
Is there a digital output on the linear ccd?
I was watching Geoscientist on National Geographic. There was some kind of device put on a turtle to track it in the oceon. It might have had a ccd in it. The flash the device on the screen it had what looked like a 40 pin or so dip.