CLI-8 Cartridges, How does the chip really monitor ink?

[stu]

I'm sure they do use encryption but given the size and cost of the chip, I doubt it's very heavy because the chip is probably not very powerful.

Just wanted to shove in my 10 penneth worth just to save you some effort or at least ask you to confirm or deny..

My sources indicated that a chip manufacturer took some time (considerable as it turned out) to work on the encryption on these chips and found that the encryption is multilayer... ie: 32bit, 64bit, 128, etc... with each layer being peeled back to show a greater level so they basically gave up in the end. Bearing in the mind that the source supplies a LOT of aftermarket cartridges and was looking to keep their canon market going they would have had to have a LOT of problems for them to give up.

Worth having a direct source to test and maybe beat it all though so just take it with a pinch of salt..

seems obvious to me there is a huge market for beating the chip,It's just a matter of cost management,it would cost alot of money to do and you would be opening yourself up to a lawsuit(even if canon has no case they will still cost you alot of money in litigation).I think the answer is to return these printers under the pretense that they did not divulge the fact you would need to buy only their ink.that will hurt their bottom line and thats the only way to make changes in the industry.
i would rather pay twice as much for the printer and get ink at a reasonable cost.

 

[mikling]

Now just look at this math for a second and you'll see what is going on. You'll pay twice the price for the printer for cheaper inks. But..................................If you look at the cost of inks and how many cartridges you'll have to buy over the lifetime of the printer, I think they'll have to charge over four times what they are charging now for a new printer to equal the same profit in the end. Ain't gonna happen.

The inkjet printer market has matured and the remaining players have their niches and know what is best for their bottom lime.

 

[Trigger 37]

This thread on this forum continues to be very interesting. For those of you who may be interested, I've been looking very close at the Ip4200 Service Manual that has quite a bit of information. I would think that Canonfodder already has a copy since he has a iP4200, so he probably knows most of it.

One thing I did notice is that the same machine tagged as being sold and used in Japan uses BCI-7BK,C,M,Y, carts and not the CLI-8 carts. Since BCI-X is a very well know item, this tells me that the lucky people in Japan don't have chipped carts in there machines! I guess the Japanese would not put up with it. However, there are destination codes that can be changed in the printer to allow it to use BCI-7 carts. Now if we only knew what they were and what kind of ink was in them,.. and where to buy them,.... all this discussion would be over.

I have a Canon iP6600D but the difference between the iP4200 and the 6600 is only the carriage, printhead, and Photo Cyan, Magenta ink carts. There are some other hardware differences such as the built in LCD display but the guts are pretty much the same. I wanted to confirm that the service manual for the 4200 was close to the 6600, so I followed the "Service Mode Settings" in the manual and used them on the 6600 and it worked fine. I forced it to enter Service MOde, then I forced it to print the Service Test Print and then forced it to print the EEPROM data. Very interesting information there. The Manual also provides the full block diagram of all the wiring in the machine as well as the pin out and description of each pin/wire/cable that connects all the electronics in the machine. The interesting one is the wiring to the Carriarge, which includes the bit assignments to all the print head nozzles,... and the EEProm, Chip selects, Clocks, and Serial Data lines. All of this shows the wiring to the Carriage but not the detail inside the carriage. The detail pins that connect to the printhead are show. Since the wiring to the Cartridge chips is internal to the Carriage, this is not shown, nor is the logic on the carriage that actually does the decoding to select individual carts and chips. If your really interested there are links on this web site to get the iP4200 Service Manual pdf.

As far as the Class Action Suit,,.. I don't think it will ever happen. First of all, Epson did not loose their CAS, they settled it out of court, and as a result there was no judement aginst them. Therefore Epson can and will continue what they were doing... Canon saw this and are very pleased with the results. There has been other posts to this web site about the "Actual Warranty Statement" canon has made and I don't remember the exact words but the main point was " customers will not loose there warranty or service support if they use non-oem ink and refill carts. However, Canon can tell if non-oem inks were used and if any part of the service repair was caused by such usage, Canon will charge the customer for all parts necessary to repair the printer even if it is still under warranty." Now the lawyers can argue over that for a long time, but as everyone of this site knows,.. 92% of the population that use Canon printers won't mess around with non-oem inks. These people will do this because they know so little about computers and printer technology, they will not even think they have the time or skill to refill ink and save some money. I bet there are not 300 people on this web site that have done refilling on their printers.

Let's face it,.. it's all about the $$$$$$, and Canon and every other printer mfg. has the same marketing strategy,... Give the printer away and charge like hell for the ink. Think about the way Canon supports people. Do they come out and tell you how to adjust your printer to get the best picture quality even with their own ink and paper. Do they support any other paper other that theirs. Do they make it easy to calibrate your monitor, computer, and printer so the prints your camera makes come out right. No No NO,... Because the more you mess with trying to get these right,... the more ink you use. The more you screw up,.. the more ink you use. Do they tell you how to clean your print head when it clogs,..no because the more you clean it the more ink you use,... do they tell you anything that you need to know. Ask yourself why do 90% of the pictures people print come out a little darker that they should,... why.
The darker the picture the more ink is use. Why do they continue to push super high resolution printers and 5, 6, 7, and 8 color ink printers,... INK INK INK,.... $$$$$$$$.

On the issue sueing them because they take away the ink monitor function when you use non-oem ink,.. all they have to argue to the court is, "our printers use very sophisticated ink monitoring systems that are designed to match Canon ink and Canon carts, and we precicely measure each and every ink nozzle drop. If we continued to measure ink that was not ours and reported false information to customers when we thought it was correct but something went wrong because non-oem ink did not match our meansurement system, and something went wrong with the printer, or a printhead went bad, then we could not accept the responsibilty. So we must disable the monitor when non-oem inks are used."

One last point for any one that cares. If your going to refill your own carts, you can print out from time to time the EEProm data from the machine via service mode and see the exact nozzle count for each ink cart. I have no idea how one could translate this into a ink monitoring number but maybe someone does. The guys in Germany have software that can read that same data for the Epson printers and have provided many of us their monitoring software. It would seem easier if we all chipped in a couple of bucks and asked them to modify their SSCE software to work on Canon printers. Anyone interested?

 

[canonfodder]

This thread on this forum continues to be very interesting. For those of you who may be interested, I've been looking very close at the Ip4200 Service Manual that has quite a bit of information. I would think that Canonfodder already has a copy since he has a iP4200, so he probably knows most of it.

and further down:

If your really interested there are links on this web site to get the iP4200 Service Manual pdf.

Not so, Trigger 37! Canonfodder does have the iP4200, but "he probably knows most of it." does not apply. Canonfodder is very interested, but there are too few hours in the day to do even one quarter of the things he would like to do. So, digging into the workings of the iP4200 has taken a place pretty far back in the line.

I am presently refilling the iP4200 OEM carts, using Image Specialists bulk ink. I find this very easy, having learned many things from posts on this forum. I am also building a CIS for the iP4200, putting into practice the ideas I previously posted. I don't print enough quantity to merit a CIS, but I am very interested in making a very good one, and I will benefit by the direct visibility of the ink on hand. This will be my answer to the disabled ink monitor.

As to the service manual, I do not have one, and would like very much to download one.

Just where are the links "on this web site" to get the iP4200 Service Manual pdf ?

 

[ghwellsjr]

The manual is available as item number 6892224027 on eBay. I bought CDs for all five printers I have at the same time for less than $20. They came in two days.

 

[mikling]

The BCI-7 is a CHIPPED cartridge. I have samples so this is no speculation.
The inkset matches that of the CLI-8 however and NOT the BCI-6

 

[Stevevo]

This thread on this forum continues to be very interesting. For those of you who may be interested, I've been looking very close at the Ip4200 Service Manual that has quite a bit of information. I would think that Canonfodder already has a copy since he has a iP4200, so he probably knows most of it.

and further down:

If your really interested there are links on this web site to get the iP4200 Service Manual pdf.

Not so, Trigger 37! Canonfodder does have the iP4200, but "he probably knows most of it." does not apply. Canonfodder is very interested, but there are too few hours in the day to do even one quarter of the things he would like to do. So, digging into the workings of the iP4200 has taken a place pretty far back in the line.

I am presently refilling the iP4200 OEM carts, using Image Specialists bulk ink. I find this very easy, having learned many things from posts on this forum. I am also building a CIS for the iP4200, putting into practice the ideas I previously posted. I don't print enough quantity to merit a CIS, but I am very interested in making a very good one, and I will benefit by the direct visibility of the ink on hand. This will be my answer to the disabled ink monitor.

As to the service manual, I do not have one, and would like very much to download one.

Just where are the links "on this web site" to get the iP4200 Service Manual pdf ?

I got my service manual from http://www.nodevice.com/manual/ It costs $4.95 per day with a 7 download maximum or $9.95 for a month with 7 download per day. They have manuals for most brands and also cell phones and other things.

I have been refilling my carts for the Pixma MP500 for a year now and ran into an unusual thing this last time the Magenta ran out. It came up and it would not let me print as it said there were two cartridges of the same kind installed. Error U071. The only way to get out of the error and use the printer was to install a new Magenta cart and then it showed it was full and the monitor works as new but all other ones show empty and exclamation mark in yellow on top of them in the pop up. Has anyone else found this and how did you correct it?

 

[mikling]

Chips do fail now and then. Replacing a failed chip with a new cartridge will reactivate the level monitor for that cartridge but the printer will warn the others are empty as far as the printer is concerned.

 

[Trigger 37]

Mikling,... Thanks for the followup. I'm very supprised that the BCI-7 carts are chippped. Why could Canon make two different carts for the same line of printer and only allow one of them to work in Japanese machine,.. especially if they have the same ink. Can you tell if the chips appear to be idential to the CLI-8 chips?

Stevevo,... Acer web site seems to have changed the rules since you were last there. Their "Day", Month, and Year charges now allow "Unlimited downloads". I can't find anything in their agreement that limits the downloads to 7. Thanks a million for the link,.. I know I'm going to use it,.. even though I feel the ip4200 manual is very close to the iP6600D. They also have the Parts manuals which should also be very important to users like myself that actually repair things.

Canonfodder,... Since you have contributed so much to this forum, I'll send you a copy of the iP4200 PDF. All others that want it,.. don't both to ask me as I don't have any more time than anyone else. You can easily find your own copy by just doing a search on the internet for "Service Manuals". It was a simple download.

For those that are interested,.. the manual also has some very interesting other data. It has a very long list of all the actions that will cause the Printer control logic to force a cleaning cycle on either or both the Black and Color. It also list exactly just how much ink is pulled out for each type of action. Typical numbers are 1.5 gram of Black and 1.0 gram for Color for a deep cleaning cycle. The numbers are 0.14 B, and 0.5 Color for a manual cleaning. There is also a onboard clock that keeps track of the number of hours laps since the last cleaning and will force a cleaning at specific times and this can count up to over 1000 hours. Another item in the manual is a rather complete table of printer "Resolutions",.. for specific papers, and settings, for speed and Quality. I was printing some 3x5 photos for my wifes thank you cards and made a mistake on setting the quality setting and when it printed It did it in half the time as all my previous printings and I could not tell the difference in quality. After all, I have a 5x and a 10 magnifier glass and I can not see the individual ink drops on the print out. By the way,... a higher quality setting also uses more INK. My mistake was selecting Quality=3 rather that 1.

One last point. The manual also provides a way of reseting most all of the data in the Printer EEprom, including all ink usage and all page counts. So if you ever had a problem and needed to have the printer serviced under warranty, just put back the "Spare set of Canon Carts" that each of you have, then reset the EEProm data, and take the printer to the service shop. I'm sure they will complain,.. but after all,... you don't know how it got reset,..you were just pushing all the buttons when it stopped printing trying to get it to work again.

 

[Stevevo]

They don't tell you that the downloads are limited to 7 until you pay for it and then when you download it says only allow for 7 per day. I complained that they need to change their rules up front before you pay and that is why I put that down so no one else will feel cheated. You can check if they have the manuals before you pay which is nice. They did open up the downloads for me after I emailed them that was not fair and they said they had to do that as someone tried to download the whole database. Yikes!!