Canon Pixma iP4700 Euro controller transplant?

[gkitf16]

Since i got my new iP4700 last week, I'm already sick of it. It jerks off for several minutes every time you switch it on before it prints, and tells me it's offline whenever I send it a print job unless I manually switch it on. Of course to top it all off, it's a US model, which I discovered, after much time spent trying to enable disc print mode, that it doesn't do discs at all.

Why the hell does Canon sell a printer with a disc slot that won't print discs? And why do they produce models out of numerical sequence, i.e. the iP5200 was produced before the ip4700. The 5200, which was my last printer before this one, printed discs after having the function enabled by the button-pushing sequence. Unfortunately it passed away recently.

I am looking for some way to swap the controller or whatever from a Euro/Canadian iP4700 into my US machine so I can get back to running discs again. Not interested in Epson. Wish I could get my hands on a decent 5200. Already have hobbicolors refills and have used the German hole method (excellent!).

Do the cart chips care whether they're in a US or Euro-controlled machine? Any ideas appreciated!

 

[jackson]

AFAIK, the ability to convert US Canon printers by altering the firmware ended at the IP4500.

As a side note, Canon Canada lists the cd printing feature on the ip4700.
Most (all) of the on line retailers in Canada, being lazy, simply use the US blurb advertising and don't mention the feature.
At least one 'Canadian' company is shipping crippled US Canon printers into Canada;these printers have no CD tray and cannot be modified.
It is a continual problem with on line buying of these printers (from the posts by prospective buyers in Canada) as to whether they are getting the CD printing version.
The only way I know what I am buying is to go into the store and eyeball the box.

 

[SpideRMaN]

Do the cart chips care whether they're in a US or Euro-controlled machine? Any ideas appreciated!

Yes they do. EG:

PGI220 = US
PGI520 = EUR (same cart model)

 

[qwertydude]

My solution at least to my ip4600 printer from going through its unnecessarily long ink wasting cycle i.e. "cleaning" every time you turn it on was to refill it and disable ink monitoring. I suppose you plan on refilling since you joined a refilling forum. So when you do just simply let it complain tell you your warranty will explode, Santa will permanently put you on his naughty list, and warn you the earth will stop rotating because you're refilling and after all your inks have been disabled the printer won't go through any of those ridiculous ink wasting cycles. And is it really that hard to open the lid every once in a while to manually check ink levels? People seem to think it's such a pain to do that.

 

[SpideRMaN]

@qwertydude

have you ever checked your waste ink tank % from eeprom ?

after a set of carts you will be amazed . . your ink tank will be 3.7 % that is almost half of your valuable ink is wasted (keep in mind that each cart is only 9ml)

I have 2 oem sets of carts with ARChips and am enjoying the printer to the full

one good thing to do is refill a complete set and replace the complete set at one go. doing so will save a lot of head cleaning when ever you replace a cart