How much effort is it worth to save my Canon Pro-10

[The Hat]

It's not good to just let it sit around,

You’re not alone on this one, because I had terrible luck with my Pro 10, I just couldn’t get it to work for me and I ended up dumping it to save my sanity..

I was left with ink, two sets of carts and resetter and two print heads…

 

[palombian]

It's killing me- but I rely on a printer for my business. It's not good to just let it sit around, or I might jump in at alter date.

I see.
But why not have 2 of them ? Every professional photographer has a backup camera body.
A printer takes more room of coarse, but I have both my PRO-10 and PRO-9500II one above the other on a recovered TV table.

 

[MadAboutPrinters]

That's an idea I considered. My printer needs have changed from "fine art" mixed media photography prints to more commercial greeting cards, stickers, and the like.

 

[ricecrispies]

It's my understanding you need a PC to put printer in service mode to then rest counter. I'm willing to spend $200 on a refurbished PC laptop to use as a "service machine" for my printer.

If you only need a PC for something like that, then why not just run Windows in a virtual machine on your Mac, giving the virtual machine access to your USB ports? I would recommend the free version of VMWare for this (because VirtualBox is very frustrating to use). As for where to get Windows from, I doubt Microsoft are really going to care for such rare use if you just install Windows 10 or 11 on the virtual machine and click to say that you will provide a license key later. It will still work (although after a while you won't be able to get security updates, so I wouldn't use it for serious work with any information that you want to protect or keep private).

 

[pharmacist]

If your Mac is an Intel machine: install Windows natively on it with dual boot using native Windows and you are set.

 

[ricecrispies]

If your Mac is an Intel machine: install Windows natively on it with dual boot using native Windows and you are set.

Yes, that would work too. However, the advantages of using a virtual machine would be:
1. It takes up less disk space;
2. If you are using an unlicensed copy of Windows or an outdated version, such as Windows 7, neither of which get security updates, you won't have to worry about malicious software overwriting the contents of your Mac OS disk.