Hi David, The cartridges DO have contacts which relay the info about remaining ink levels in the cartridge. The contacts are visible from the outside of the cartridge. They match up with corresponding contacts within the printer. This information is captured by the printer and sent to the cpu via usb.
And elapsed time has nothing to do with the remaining ink in a cartridge. Ward Oldham On Tuesday, January 7, 2003, at 10:39 PM, David Dudine wrote: > Lee Larson wrote: > >> From: leelarson at mac.com >> Reply-To: macgroup at erdos.math.louisville.edu >> Date: Tue, 7 Jan 2003 20:26:22 -0500 >> To: macgroup at erdos.math.louisville.edu >> Subject: Re: MacGroup: Epson cartridge contacts >> >> The Epson cartridges have a small circuit board in the ink cartridge >> that has a few bytes of RAM. The RAM contains an estimate of the >> amount >> of ink remaining in the cartridge. When a cartridge is inserted into >> the printer, the RAM is read into the printer. As the cartridge is >> used, the printer "guess"timates how much ink has been squirted, and >> periodically writes a new estimate of the remaining ink to the RAM in >> the cartridge. > > > This is the basis of my question about the contacts. The cartridges > have no > contacts to relay the information. But I see a graphic every time I > print > which shows the levels for all four colors. The levels start full and > gradually go down. But, do they go down with time, or with ink use, or > both? I haven't noticed. > > > Sometimes I go weeks without printing anything. Maybe the Epson > software is > telling me that the cartridges are becoming empty when they are not, > based > on time. I haven't paid attention to that. If a RAM chip in the > cartridge > is guessing the ink levels based upon use, how does the information > get out > of the cartridge? > > I think you all care about this conundrum more than I do, (except for > my > desire not to throw away a half used cartridge). I have found it, and > I > leave it to you to sort it out as you wish. > > Not Looking For Trouble, > > David Dudine > > > > | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will > | be January 28. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>. > | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will | be January 28. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>.
