Canon MX870 cartridge refilling

[torch]

If you need to wait for 5 minutes for the ink to settle in the sponges there is something wrong. It should not take more than 30 seconds before you can top off your cartridges. The total amount of ink it takes to refill could be as much as 10 ml. If it takes much less for an empty cartridge there is a problem right there.

I don't know that 5 minutes was required. But by the time I set it aside, pierced the next one, refilled it and got back to the first one, 5 minutes or so had passed.

I am trying to use compatible ink cartridges with it but repeatedly get errors (alarms) that say the cartridges cannot be
recognized.

Are you sure that the "compatible" cartridges are the ones for your regional area? As I said in the original post, "If you are in North America, your printer needs cartridges prefixed with a "2" -- CLI-221 for dye based colour/black, PGI-220 for pigment based black. If you are in Europe, your carts are prefixed with a 5 -- CLI-521 and PGI-520. And finally Asians are looking for an 8, as in 821/820. Canon is apparently trying the DVD route to control pricing -- the chips are the only difference and a cartridge from one area won't work in a printer from another."

So if you are in North America and bought, say, a CLI-821 compatible cartridge, then it won't work in your printer because it has the wrong chip even though it is physically identical to your CLI-221 cartridge.