Of using older equipment that the manufacturer would rather you put out to pasture and spend money on something brand new, is the lack of support for the old equipment.
One of my unsupported pieces of equipment is my Epson R1900 printer. The one with we've modified with the continuous ink system and ink waste receptacles (tubes from the machine to bottles outside of the printer that I dump as they become full; running a print head clean cycle uses ink and the ink has to go somewhere; before the receptacles were installed, the ink just dumped into an unreplaceable pad in the bottom of the machine). The printer has an internal counter that counts the amount of ink that it thinks your machine has used, based on your usage. Once it reaches 100%, the machine won't work. Used to be, Epson had a counter reset utility on its website.
No longer. Was I SOOL?
Fortunately, I did find a site that has a program that will reset this amount. It comes with a trial usage key that will reset the count back to 90%, then if you want, you can buy a key to reset it all the way back to zero. The more keys you buy (just a set of numbers) the cheaper they are. Each key can only be used once. This morning, I bought five keys. I should be set for a couple of years.
I'd hate to have to get a new printer, I like the one I have.
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