This needs to be in PLUG's "Best Of". On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 4:02 PM, S. Dale Morrey <[email protected]>wrote:
> Just a thought, a mental exercise if you will. > > If someone were to implement a workaround that didn't require a > firmware update to a dev firmware, they might look very carefully at > each cartridge and realize that the cartridge has a serial number. A > little bit of thought might reveal that this serial number might just > be placed into a table that is tracked by the printer in nvram. > > When page count reaches x, then it would throw that error and refuse > to use a cartridge with that serial number. Now I'm not saying this > would work, but a full hardware reset has been known from time to time > to erase the all the contents of nvram and frankly it's not that hard > to do if you're in there replacing a part anyways. :) > > Of course this doesn't work for cartridges that have their own > counter, so I also heard through the grapevine that there is a super > secret firmware that you can load for every single printer made by HP > that features the awesome Quality Assurance single vendor lock in > tool. > > The word is that this firmware is a development tool created by HP > Printing Engineers, because when developing firmware and drivers, > having that stupid page count thing go off can be a real PITA. Perhaps > they use some compile time magic changes pagecount+=1 to something > else. (It's not written in C or ASM that's all I'm allowed to say) > > Now of course as some of you already know, I used to work for HP and > while there, I lead the team that developed the new toolchain that > they use to write their firmware and I'm still under NDA for another > year or two. The NDA is very strict. I can't discuss anything other > than my general role (can't even mention tools used) therefore I'm not > saying this firmware exists, so I'm just speaking purely > hypothetically. > > It's all postulation, but if it did exist, perhaps it would be listed > under modelnum_firmware_revnum_dev or modelnum_firmware_rev_eng > instead of _rel or _release and maybe they would list it on their > site, or possibly on bittorrent somewhere. Again I have no knowledge > of these things, it's just speculation :) > > > > > > On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 4:30 PM, Barry Roberts <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Sun, Mar 17, 2013 at 10:17 PM, Andy Bradford > > <[email protected]> wrote: > >> For extremely easy setup and low TCO, I've always gone with HP > >> PostScript laser jet printers with a network adapter. > > > > My frustration with my current HP printer is the "smart" drum and > > toner cartridges that just refuse to print when their count gets to > > the HP-specified level. I want to print until the quality starts > > degrading, then replace it. That and the price of hp supplies makes > > the cost/page of my current HP printer quite high. Unless I hear HP > > has changed from that practice significantly, I'm not inclined to buy > > HP again. > > > > /* > > PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net > > Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug > > Don't fear the penguin. > > */ > > /* > PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net > Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug > Don't fear the penguin. > */ > /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
