The 1270-Bad news

["Steve Jacobson" <stevej@dji.com>]

I saw the 1270 at the Seybold show on Thursday.  I enquired about the chip
in the cart and what it does.  No one could (or would) tell me anything.  I
finally hunted down the product manager, and asked to pull the color cart.
It indeed has a small circuit board on the rear of the cart.  The cart
itself is the same size as the 1200 carts.  He finally admitted that the
chip is a small RAM that stores the cart information as well as the
estimated usage drop count.  When the drop count reaches some threshold, the
cart is declared "empty" and must be replaced (kinda like the 1200).  The
difference is that the count (and the empty indication) stays with the cart
(on the chip), and just taking out the cart and putting it back in doesn't
reset the counts.

Bottom line:  Unless the 3rd party ink folks (like WeInk, MediaStreet, etc.)
figure out how to either: 1) externally reset the chip, 2) fool the printer
into using a cart that doesn't have a chip, or 3) somehow reverse
engineering a chip to build a new 3rd party cart with chip in it, the days
of refilling or 3rd party carts is over.

Epson intends to do this with all their new printers.

I think I might buy me a spare 1200.

-------------------------------------------
Steve,
stevej@dji.com
<mailto:stevej@dji.com>
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