Hi everyone, haven't been active here in years, but I would like to ask for assistance here before I give up on an Epson Stylus R380 printer I bought used.
I was looking in the forum history for similar problems and solutions, found similar problems but no solutions.
One of the posts said that if you can't get cartridges to be recognized (reading the chips) then the logic board may be bad.
Other posts (here & elsewhere) have spoken of firmware updates sent out to the printer to make it reject 3rd party cartridges
and only work with genuine Epson cartridges.
I found this printer used locally and had a friend that has been using R380's to print on CD's and DVD for years,
I was trying to get him a good deal on another one as they do wear out eventually, so bought it as-is, non-returnable.
Here is what it does, and I think it is quite peculiar! It came with 3 Epson ink carts and 3 3rd party ones.
It gives an error message that it cannot recognize the Epson cartridges! As a matter of fact, there were 3
extra used Epson cartridges in the box of those same colors, so I think the previous owner had this come up,
found out that changing the cartridges didn't help, and gave the printer away to the resale store I found it at.
You would think that it would flag the 3rd party cartridges as not recognized when you have a mixture like that.
Now if I were to take out just one of the 3rd party cartridges, it would recognize the Epson cartridges AND the 3rd party ones,
only the missing one would give an error.
The guy who would get the printer wanted to buy a continuous inking system for it and ordered one.
I tried to install it, and it gave me the 'cartridge not recognized' error on all 6 of them. I went thru troubleshooting steps
from the CIS company and it did not clear the error. At the very end of doing this, I decided to unlatch just one cartridge
of the set a little bit and see what happened, then I got the message that only that one cartridge was not recognized,
when I pushed it back into place, it went back to the error on all 6 cartridges again!
Final notes - I did not go out and buy Epson cartridges to replace the 3rd party ones, was afraid it would be a waste
of money as it would not recognize them either. I've never seen the printer work, but it looks like new physically.
So I guess it sounds like a logic board error more than a firmware issue, so is there a source anywhere for
a replacement logic board? How hard would it be to change out, or should I just give up on it and advise my
friend to move to the current model Epson all-in-one's that print to CD's, or a different brand?
Thanks for any ideas on this in advance.
Ron Holder
I was looking in the forum history for similar problems and solutions, found similar problems but no solutions.
One of the posts said that if you can't get cartridges to be recognized (reading the chips) then the logic board may be bad.
Other posts (here & elsewhere) have spoken of firmware updates sent out to the printer to make it reject 3rd party cartridges
and only work with genuine Epson cartridges.
I found this printer used locally and had a friend that has been using R380's to print on CD's and DVD for years,
I was trying to get him a good deal on another one as they do wear out eventually, so bought it as-is, non-returnable.
Here is what it does, and I think it is quite peculiar! It came with 3 Epson ink carts and 3 3rd party ones.
It gives an error message that it cannot recognize the Epson cartridges! As a matter of fact, there were 3
extra used Epson cartridges in the box of those same colors, so I think the previous owner had this come up,
found out that changing the cartridges didn't help, and gave the printer away to the resale store I found it at.
You would think that it would flag the 3rd party cartridges as not recognized when you have a mixture like that.
Now if I were to take out just one of the 3rd party cartridges, it would recognize the Epson cartridges AND the 3rd party ones,
only the missing one would give an error.
The guy who would get the printer wanted to buy a continuous inking system for it and ordered one.
I tried to install it, and it gave me the 'cartridge not recognized' error on all 6 of them. I went thru troubleshooting steps
from the CIS company and it did not clear the error. At the very end of doing this, I decided to unlatch just one cartridge
of the set a little bit and see what happened, then I got the message that only that one cartridge was not recognized,
when I pushed it back into place, it went back to the error on all 6 cartridges again!
Final notes - I did not go out and buy Epson cartridges to replace the 3rd party ones, was afraid it would be a waste
of money as it would not recognize them either. I've never seen the printer work, but it looks like new physically.
So I guess it sounds like a logic board error more than a firmware issue, so is there a source anywhere for
a replacement logic board? How hard would it be to change out, or should I just give up on it and advise my
friend to move to the current model Epson all-in-one's that print to CD's, or a different brand?
Thanks for any ideas on this in advance.
Ron Holder