Imagine that you go to the dealership, buy your car and when you leave they tell you that you can only fill the tank at X chain of gas stations. It would seem absurd and a joke to all of us, right? Well with the printers something similar or even worse happens. And there is no manufacturer that does not carry out this practice. Unfortunately for Canon, trying to force the purchase of their cartridges It is becoming a frog, since there is such a shortage of semiconductors today that they do not have chips for their ink cartridges.
A dubious practice that turns against its masters
Whether you buy an inkjet printer or go for a laser, everything original replacement today has a chip in the cartridge, whose functions are very varied. They control the numberremaining ink level, store information about the toner or cartridge color and the most important. They let the printer know that it is a genuine cartridge. As? Well, through a complex DRM system.
This doesn't mean you can't mount compatible cartridges on your printer. Sure you can—and they're much cheaper—but you risk having your printer malfunction. It will constantly tell you that your cartridge is not original, it will poorly control the ink levels and it will give you endless headaches so that in the end you end up checking out.
On the other hand, the "pirate" world behind printer ink is absolutely fascinating. The original chips are inserted into the fake cartridges, they are reset, the batteries are changed... a show.
Canon explains how to bypass its own lock
Well, Canon is having chip supply problems for its laser multifunction printers. But of course, since toner is a complementary good, they cannot stop manufacturing it and leave all their customers without consumables. What can they do then? The decision of the Japanese has been clear and simple: to start sell ink cartridges without DRM chips.
Luckily, Canon printers are quite permissive when we put a spare part not original, and it is what Canon itself has wanted to convey to its customers, both on its support website and via e-mail. A series of guides have been published to "bypass" the error on each and every affected printer. However, if we take a good look at the steps that Canon shows, we could say that avoiding the problem is as simple as ignore the countless error messages that the machine is going to give us, each one with its peculiarities, of course. Once that is done, you will be able to use the printer without problems, although you will not have statistics on the remaining ink levels.
https://twitter.com/mariowitte/status/1479481418887663624
The semiconductor supply crisis may continue to be a nuisance during 2022. In the case of Canon, it is true that it seems that the problem with its toners is relatively easy to fix. However, they point out through various forums that, in the case of printers HP, solving the problem would not be so simple, because the DRM not only controls the same as those of Canon but also, they have region lock, and the printer stops working the moment it detects an uncertified cartridge, whether or not it is original.
I use a Brother laser, with pirated toner from the first replacement and no problem.
You don't need a chip for Canon printers to print well.
We have to pass the reset to the clients and two by three when updating the printers we have to do them again.
What Canon does like other manufacturers is to ensure a monopoly. What would happen if we put chips in coffee capsules, or in gasoline or car oil?
Because we allow it with our printers.
Manuel Garrido from Quecartucho.es