Do chips have a finite life?

[PenguinLust]

I just pulled my cyan CLI-226 out of my printer, because my printer said it was low. But when I put it in the resetter, nothing happens. How many times can you reset a chip until it's no good anymore? I don't think it was reset as many as a dozen times.
I'm pretty sure my resetter is good. It was able to reset another chip and the battery is at about 2.9V.

 

[The Hat]

The Canon cartridge chip is only designed to last for one use only, it was never meant to be reset at all, so yes, they can fail very quickly or not at all.

Most likely its your resetter and if not then it's the chip, now if it’s your resetter then a poor preforming resetter can ban jacks every chip you try to reset, so be careful and make sure your resetter is working properly, then find a new source for another CLI-226 cyan chip... belt & braces..

 

[PeterBJ]

The no load voltage of a new and unused CR2032 Lithium cell is around 3.30V. If the no-load voltage of a such cell is 2.90V it is close to being too worn to work reliably in my original REdSETTERs. I suggest to replace the battery, to avoid further problems. A resetter running low on battery can ruin a chip by writing garbled data to it.

The battery has an internal resistance that causes the voltage to drop when current is drawn. Many resetters draw approximately 5mA when doing a reset. Loading the battery with a 680 ohm resistor while measuring the output voltage would give a better indication of if the battery is still suitable for use.

This thread has more about batteries and resetters.

 

[PenguinLust]

I don't think it's as low as 2.90V, but it is definitely less than 3V. I don't remember seeing 3.30V engraved on it. Seems to have been a short life, although I suppose my 2-year-old could have been playing w/it. Maybe I'll pick up a cheap CR2032 from the dollar store just to diagnose the problem.

But if my chip is at the end of its life: how might that manifest itself in the resetter's behaviour. The correct operation for the resetter is for it to blink short a couple of times then blink long. Could the shorter blinks indicate a proper functioning chip (as my printer has indicated a few minutes before) while the long blink indicates a successful write? Because I didn't get any blinking w/the cyan chip.

 

[The Hat]

The correct operation for the resetter is for it to blink short a couple of times then blink long

When you put the cartridge into the resetter, the LET will light up to show a successful reset, the LED light should stay on, (No blinking) and if it doesn’t then you got a problem...

 

[stratman]

@PenguinLust

Different resetters (or the chips themselves) may have different visual sequences to the blinks. I noticed this when resetting someone's MP6xx Canon OEM cartridges and their newly purchased resetter the first time. The blink sequence was different than that with my resetter and my Canon OEM MP8xx cartridges.

It could be a one off bad chip or it could be low battery power. The safe thing to do is replace the batteries in the resetter instead of risking ruining another chip.

I bought replacement batteries at the Dollar Store, two for a buck. They may not last as long as higher priced batteries. The previous batteries in my TimeStick Trio lasted over two years. We'll see with the Dollar Store batteries.

 

[PeterBJ]

I have a remote control for a cable TV box. The remote uses two CR2032 cells. The remote had become unreliable even if I aimed it carefully, meaning the batteries needed replacement. With new cells the remote was OK again. The new cells had an unloaded voltage of 3.30 V, the worn out cells still had a no load voltage of 3.00 V.

A battery or cell can be compared to an ideal battery with output voltage = the no load voltage in series with an internal resistor. As the battery wears out the no load voltage decreases and the internal resistance increases. The increased voltage drop over this increased resistance caused the battery voltage to drop too much under load, so the seemingly still useful batteries were no good. The no load voltage is not the best indicator to show if a battery is still useful.

The same of course applies to batteries powering resetters.

 

[PenguinLust]

Well, I went and picked up a 3-pack for 1.25CAD. Each of those should do me about 3.5 resets. So, trying my resetter again, it reset the cyan chip properly. I guess that was it: my 2-year-old was probably seeing what it could do. Thanks.

 

[PeterBJ]

Thanks for the feed-back, but normally a fresh CR2032 cell will last for several resets. I haven't counted the number of resets before the cell wears out out, but maybe 100 resets is possible.

 

[FryingSaucer]

The last few resetters I've had are USB powered, so fortunately don't have any battery run down problems.