Pgi 225 & Cli 226 Chips Are Blowing Using Usb Resetter.

That's strange. A lower voltage should do no harm, unless it was applied to some wrong point. How or at what points did you apply the battery voltage? I should have pointed out that the voltage across C2 should be verified to be around 3.2 V before proceeding with further tests. Sorry for that omission!

3 V from 2 series connected AA or AAA alkaline cells could also be applied directly to C2. Observe polarity, wrong polarity can cause a short circuit. The positive terminal of the capacitor is marked with a plus sign on the circuit board. On the capacitor the minus terminal is most likely marked with a black band with minus signs. The battery box for 2 AA or AAA cells should also be with a switch, or leakage current in C2 could drain the batteries.

You could try this modification on the other resetter, but do no other testing than verifying voltage and polarity across C2 and that the start-up sequence is indicated on the LED, when pressing the button. Don't risk any more chips.

C2 says 25 v 10uF
pictures are coming soon.

Well I just found a huge error I was making in checking the voltage. I was assuming the metal housing of the usb receptacle was grounded. So I was checking between it and C1. WRONG It is not grounded. So now after checking the voltage between the ground of the internal USB recept. and C1 I am getting a Voltage reading of 3.92

I cant explain it but I cannot duplicate that old 3.63 v reading I gave you at c2 when plugged into a USB port on my PC. It seems to be bouncing around now from 4.48 -- 4.35v so I guess that's about a .6 drop from the 5v usb measurement. So now from a battery box voltage of 4.65 - 3.92= .73 drop. So Im still not down to the 3.3-3.0 V level. Im thinking of trying 3 NiCad AAA bat which would be just over 3.6v to start then .6 drop Id be down to 3V.????
Ive included some more pics of the battery box connections. double clik them to get the BIG PIC.

I guess one of the diodes has shorted out, so you are now only getting one diode voltage drop. The idea with the 3 NiCd's or NiMH's sounds reasonable, but be aware that the voltage of a freshly charged NiCD or NiMH cell is higher than 1.2 V, so this idea might be better in theory than in praxis.

You should clean the stray solder away from the solder side of the pcb. It has potential to create short circuits. Q-tips moistened with isopropyl alcohol can be used for this cleaning.

A word of caution: Even an AA or AAA NiCd or NiMH cell can create a short circuit current that is strong enough to burn thin wiring.

You can check the voltage supplied to the chip using 1 and 3:

Sorry for the off topic question, but I am considering a chip resetter and I was wondering, if I don't refill my cart to the top, will the chip still indicate that its full, or is there something like an optical sensor or something?
I am asking this because I generally don't refill to full cart, as I happen to have screwed ink flow a couple of times.

It’s not necessary to completely refill your cartridges to full and once you have reset the chip then the optical sensor will show low ink when the reservoir becomes empty, so no worries.

Oh, ok. Great, thank you

PeterBJ said:

I guess one of the diodes has shorted out, so you are now only getting one diode voltage drop. The idea with the 3 NiCd's or NiMH's sounds reasonable, but be aware that the voltage of a freshly charged NiCD or NiMH cell is higher than 1.2 V, so this idea might be better in theory than in praxis.

You should clean the stray solder away from the solder side of the pcb. It has potential to create short circuits. Q-tips moistened with isopropyl alcohol can be used for this cleaning.

A word of caution: Even an AA or AAA NiCd or NiMH cell can create a short circuit current that is strong enough to burn thin wiring.

Click to expand...

OK I would like to bring this whole thread to end on my part. Peter with the 3 AAA nicads installed in the battery pac, I got 3.94 v after a full charge and then I let them set for about 4 hours. The voltage at C1 or as Tudor suggested on pads 1 & 3 I got 3.26V which I guess should have been ideal. I still could not resett any of the chips that I had blown or could not reset one good chip that I still had. The USB light would flash red and green but the led on the cartridge would not flash. I got my new battery operated resetter from precision colors today and guess what, I was able to reset all the chips except one yellow one. So Ive learned a little from this experiment and from you guys also, but as far as Im concerned these usb resetters are in the trash as of now. Buy the way I got lucky today and found 45 carts (9 full sets)OEM virgin on ebay that I was able to buy for $10 bucks which should keep me going for quite a while now. So now I guess its back to happy refilling.
Up to now Ive been using the german method of refilling but along with the new rsetter I ordered some flush refill plugs from precision colors also so maybe Im going to do some top filling also. What a great web site this is and I thank all you guys again for keeping it going for all us refillers.

I'm glad to hear the the new resetter was able to save most of the blown chips and I call 45 empty OEM carts for 10$ a bargain.

I suggest to use a big hammer on the USB resetters, The same behaviour from two units suggests a design flaw to me. Get rid of them before you are tempted to use one of them, the day the battery operated resetter runs low on battery. I think it would be good idea to have one or two spare CR2032's at hand.