CANON PIXMA MP480: How to reset region code?

[dstamat]

Hello there,

I bought a CANON PIXMA MP480 in the US two years ago. The printer has worked fine so far. Recently I moved to the Netherlands and now I have the problem that the printer does not recognize the - supposedly compatible - ink cartridges that are sold here. Ordering cartridges from the US takes time and the shipping costs can be excessive. Canon has not been helpful (did anybody say "bad service"?) and I do not want to scrap a fully working printer for this .

Is there a way to reset the region code of the printer? I read that it can be done on HP printers.

I would appreciate any help, ideas, etc.

Many thanks

Dimitris

 

[IanYY]

I think the answer is that you cannot change the printer to accept Euro cartridges.

The reason for saying this is that some people have reset the firmware on some Pixma printers (ip4600 etc) from US to Euro in order to enable their CD printing functions, and they have reinstalled Euro software/drivers on these printers to use this function. The printers are successfully reset; firmware reports Euro firmware; CDs print successfully; but the printers still only accept US cartridges. It seems unlikely the MP480 will be better.

Is it time to look at refilling instead?

{Edit} I changed "many people" to read "some people", because changing firmware on the ip4600 seems harder than with earlier models, possibly because the earlier models didn't use region-specific cartridges and this has made the firmware more complicated. See ... http://pixma.ulmb.com/?p=406 ...

Ian