Man-in-the-Middle PCB Unlocks HP Ink Cartridges
Man-in-the-Middle PCB Unlocks HP Ink Cartridges
It’s a well-known secret that inkjet ink is being kept at artificially high prices, which is why many opt to forego ‘genuine’ manufacturer cartridges and get third-party ones inst…
Recently they threatened to brick HP printers that use third-party cartridges if detected
Simple. Don't buy HP ever again.
If a company intentionally bricks your device then they are malicious and under no circumstances should you buy another product of theirs.
This happened to me. I honestly thought that it was something I did wrong, until I learned a little more.
Not that HP isn’t aware or not ticked off about this, mind. Recently they threatened to brick HP printers that use third-party cartridges if detected
Try that in EU.
I dare you. I double dare you.
<Jules Winnfield>What does ECCN look like?</Jules Winnfield>Glad to see that there's finally some effort to hack the shitty anti-consumer printer ink DRM.
Quite honestly, back in the 90s I thought it was essential to have a printer. Back then I used to buy a binder, and a bunch of those plastic paper holding sleeves. And I'd print out entire gamefaqs which were sometimes 300 pages.
Then ink started to get expensive. So I stopped. Then now these new printers have DRM. So I just never bought a printer since the 90s.
And I feel I'm not alone. I bet there are millions of people who would be printer customers if printer ink weren't the most artificially expensive substance on the planet.
If I could go out and buy a printer replacement ink pack for $5.00 and have it last a few months, I'd just buy them regularly. Instead I haven't paid one dime in close to 25 years. Gee, guess that financial decision paid off for them....
You might want to look at laser printers. If you're just doing black and white documents, whatever the latest Brother printer is will do a good job, do it fast, and not screech at you about your cyan running out.
It's a few hundred bucks up front, but the toner cartridges print a ton of pages and don't dry out if you don't use them. I can't recommend it enough if you have even a passing desire to make hard copies of documents.
I went directly from a dot matrix (ImageWriter II ftw!) to a laser. Except for photo prints, I find it immensely practical to be able to print stuff at home.
Nowadays you have tank printers. They're more expensive upfront but the ink is much cheaper. It's even cheaper if you go for aftermarket ink. I have an Epson and it's great. Don't think I'll go with the cheap ink however, I just don't use it that much to justify the savings
At this point if I have to print something I just go to the library. I’m fortunate, but it’s been like two years since I’ve had to print something on actual paper.
I have an HP laser printer from like 1992, before they turned to US=Privateers; rest-of-the-world=criminal pirates. HP died as a company when they spun off Agilent/Keysight as test equipment and continued the branding for contract manufactured consumer garbage. HP does not make anything. They market, place stickers on what others manufacture, and create ponzi scheme-like extortion scams, as the shriveled shell of a dying husk disconnected completely from their now long irrelevant past.
They died when inkjet ink became their core business the rest of the company revolved around.
Also Carly fiorina, she ruined it for women ceos for a while.
I did IT for decades. I absolutely refuse to own a printer. I would rather drive to the library or UPS store on the rare occasion I need to print something than to have one of these gremlin habitats in my house.
If you buy whatever Brother laser printer, the ink doesn’t dry up and you never have to print anything anyway. It’s like $100 and the cartridge lasts forever.
And also; don’t print. If you’re a developer, put in the css that says:
@media print { body,html {display:none;} }That might not completely do it because it’s a joke but slap !important or whatever wherever you want.
Brother invalidates its laser cartridges after a certain number of revolutions irrespective of how much toner is left. You used to be able to override this manually but they removed that in a software update recently. Am livid. If you know different do you mind sharing what model you have?
Disables print-as-pdf tho, could prevent some accessibility software too.
This is a good point. I obviously said the code was a joke but accessibility is something I was ignorant of early in my career when I was just trying to make the code work. Once I got some experience under my belt, I really focused on it as critical before shipping. And, surprisingly, I was always able to request extra funding for it.
Seriously though.
Bought an old second-hand Brother printer a while ago and couldn't be happier.
Model is like 10 years old, yet all spare parts and cartridges as well as just toner are readily available and the printer is perfectly fine (damn how precise laser printers are!).
They just make it happen.
I was sold on laser the minute I had to print something after a month of not needing to and it just popped out before I could get to it (thanks for AirPrint/wifi printing). My old inkjet would’ve been dried up and had to be cleaned taking like 10 minutes and wasting paper. Yeah, laser is the only way to go.
We just print photos from Walgreens or Shutterfly if we need quality color photos. Super cheap and I don’t have to maintain the equipment. Although about the only photo printing we do these days is large for the wall on glass or canvas.
Our favorite photos are also displayed on our living room AppleTV’s screensaver. We just favorite them in the Photos app and they automatically show up. My parents are used to seeing our favorite photos from vacations when house sitting before we’ve even told them what attraction we’re doing. Best feature ever.
You are probably talking about toner (dry black powder).
Great news for the population segment that was dumb enough to buy an HP printer in the last 20 years, yet is smart enough to perform this operation!
My HP printer is 15 years old and we are not changing it until it breaks.
We are used to refill cartridges with a ink syringe.
Dad is that you? :D
Unfortunately he bought a "modern" HP a few years back. It's a nightmare.
I have a really old one that doesn't do part pairing and is new enough to do color so it's worth holding on to. The ink expiration, refill and status is still locked and it still can still brick specific ink cartridges if detects stuff like low ink or whatever. At least non-hp cartridges aren't all-out blocked. I might have to steal all the information in the post so I can build my own whatever that is before hp sues everyone involved and purges it from the internet.
Some day I hope I'll find a way to refill the cartridges with ink and hack them to reset the ink levels.
They sure do seem to really hate their customers
I have a rather old office laser from like 20 years ago and it is amazing. No DRM and I buy really cheap ink cartridges. The HP site does sell my cartridge still... For over $200.
so basically just the hackers to come up with this workaround :D
Been looking for this sort of device for my Pantech laser.
The cartridge is good for 1,600 pages - no more, no less.
All well and good, they’re cheap, except.. the vast majority of my printing is in A5 size (roughly half-letter, or exactly half-A4).
Those half pages count just like any other page against the total, and I get shorted by the better part of 800 pages or so.
I have a basic Brother monochrome laser for high volume. I can buy a compatible cartridge for 9€. An Epson A3+ (tabloid) inkjet for color and photos, not a real photo printer, only 4 inks. Compatible inks cost less than 3€.
A great option is to buy auto reset refillable carts, and refill with genuine epson eco tank ink, super cheap, and guarantees Epson quality
My ecotank died just like all the other inkjets. It went few weeks without printing and blue nozzle dried completely up and on the pipes I can see dried up ink on other colors as well. So I had to dig up old Brother HL3040 back to the duty which I retired after print quality started to drop (it needs new fuse unit or something similar, so not that big of a deal) and I thought having an option to print nice color pictures would be nice.
So, if you plan to run ecotank (which does have pretty good printing quality when it works) set up a scheduled task on your computer to print something, in color, quite frequently even if it wastes some ink and paper. I think the main issue with mine was that even if I print stuff somewhat often there was a period where I only needed b&w documents so color nozzles went unused for a while.
I might get a new set of nozzles and ink tanks for my unit as it's a ton cheaper than a whole new printer, but if you're looking for a printer this is something to take into consideration, regardless of their marketing material.
Edit: Mine is Epson, didn't know that ecotank term is used by other manufacturers.
I have a brother ecotank...i know this one will wake every noon and do some quick maintenance, like attempting a 10 second print. I guess it's exactly to avoid ink drying up.
If you haven’t read the hackaday comments I highly recommend you do. Some really great behind the scenes experiences people are posting. Super cool.
that's just the Old Switcheroo with extra steps !
some 'third-party' printer consumables have custom chips on them already.
tbh i have a old hp printer sitting in the closet collecting dust we dont rlly need it anymore
Yeah I've been seeing knockoff and refilled Canon 245 cartridges for years now. Two things to worry about is:
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Canon Firmware Updates can brick them
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Some of their branding seems like grounds for lawsuit as they intentionally design their packages to look like Canon Brand. Just search 245 ink on walmart and you'll see tens of knockoffs with white and red boxes.
It's better to just do inktank printers tbh.
So never update my firmware then, got it.
I couldn't afford a Brother, but my Canon MG3620 works phenomenally with 3rd party ink. Another thing I like is that the software is delightfully stuck in the 90s. Simple and straightforward cause it literally hasn't changed since I was a kid. Yet you still get modern features like wireless and mobile printing, as well as borderless options. Everything I need a printer/scanner combo to do, and nothing more.
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[…] inkjet throws another vague error when all you want is to just print a text document.
If that's your usecase, it's cheaper (and greener) to save as pdf.
Sometimes you need a hard copy
Sure, your situation may be different. Here and for employees, it's about once per year (printing shop) and the odd package sendt (printer in post office). Even tax application is all digital now. And still, most people have one.