This post is in answer to stratman, who posted a comment in another thread:
http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=26547#p26547
on the topic of this thread. That's OK, I suppose, but I've moved back here
because I think it keeps things a bit more consistent.
stratman,
I think you are mistaken in a couple of respects. First of all I don't see any
reason why a resetter should work differently on a yellow cartridge than on any others.
That could be possible but, if so, it would simply be evidence of what I said earlier,
to wit,
"My suspicion here is that the makers
of this little thing probably haven't figured out the codes entirely, so it would work in some
circumstances but not in others. In other words, the chip on the cart may be in different states
and the resetter may not deal with all of them. Good idea but not yet fully functional."
That is not meant to impugn anyone's skill or the completeness of their work but it is not
clear that all the resetters have the same software and as yet I have not seen a comment
from anyone who would really know, i.e. someone who has actually looked at the software
or firmware and is willing to either post code from it or a reasonable expanation of what
it actually does. Again, the original "sudhaus" resetter may be just fine but that then
raises a question about whether the Chinese ones are "cloned" from that or have Chinese
written code.
There are a couple of questions here. One is whether (Canon OEM) cartridge chips are or are
not coded for the ink color, a serial number or some other factor that would defeat a
resetter on certain colors and not others. As yet I have seen no posts from anyone who is
able to confirm the answer to that question by clear experience and not by mere assertion.
This is not a matter of trying to reset aftermarket chips that cannot be reset as the only ones
I have tried have been either Canon OEM or Office Depot chips which did reset.
In other words, there is no evidence seen here yet that "flashing a different Yellow and Magenta cartridge"
is in the least bit relevant to anything at all.
Another question is over how the printer distiguishes one color of cartridge from another. For
instance, when it tells you that the "yellow" cartridge is nearly empty, how does it know that is
the one. I can think of a couple of possibilities, though I admit to not having studied the
question thoroughly. Would this or would it not be the same way a resetter distinguishes between
colors, if that is indeed the case? I would not be the least bit surprised to hear from
someone who actually knows the answer by actual experience.
Then there is the assertion that some of the chips may be damaged or defective. This assertion has come
from a number of members, some of whom may actually know what they are talking about, though I
haven't as yet seen a convincing statement of that. In other words, if the contents of the cartridge
chip, the printer firmware or the driver software are a little trickier than anyone supposes, then
it could happen that a chip could appear damaged or defective when in fact it is not.
I don't have the capability to determine what percentage of chips are becoming "defective" or who is
reporting such a conclusion but, from reading various posts, I suspect the proportion is rather
higher than would be expected in the normal use of electronic equipment and that therefore it may
not be unreasonable to suspect that some of them are actually not damaged. Also, I suspect there
are those who have looked into this more deeply than I have.
With respect to the general rate of chips going bad in installed equipment, it is actually very low.
A chip, before it is installed in any equipment or placed on a circuit board is very vulnerable
to static electricity discharges or physical stress. Once, they are soldered on to a circuit board,
however, the failure rate is surprisingly low from these causes. The Canon (and aftermarket) "chips"
are all actually a small circuit board with bare chips (probably) soldered on to them and so they
may be fairly well protected against these types of damage.Then again, maybe not, depending on
what other circuitry is on the circuit board. It should be possible to actually test some of these
"chips" for their response to a stimulus and thereby determine definitively whether they are
defective or not. I have not done this though maybe someone has. I haven't seen a comment from
anyone who actually claims to have done that and describes how it was done.RElying on whether the
little resetter flashes or does not flash is not a valid test.
