Can anyone help me with replacement chip problem?

[northernThaiguy]

Just bought a small Phaser 6180 because it uses the same EA-HG toner that my old Phaser 7760 used. I have refilled the 7760 cartridges successfully quite a few times with toner transferred from cheaper models that used the exact same toner. So, I figured this one would be a snap. Right.

I ordered replacement chips from a prominent eBay seller, and a slew of old WC73xx and 74xx toners. Replaced CYM first - they were going flat on me. Everything worked fine.

Then the K finally got close to empty, too, so did the same thing. Refilled the thing w/ my handy-dandy supply of EA-HG, and put a new K chip in. Put it back in the printer, and got a series of error codes - NONE of the carts seemed to be ok w/ the printer at that point! Hmmmm.....

Pulled the K, put the (near) empty Xerox chip back in and reinstalled. Perfect. Now it's happy w/ all of the carts!

So, figured the replacement K chip must have been bad. I had ordered a second set to have on hand (the 6180 carts don't have much in them), so got out the new replacement K and tried this one. Bad idea. Now the same series of error codes, and again, NONE of the 4 carts were acceptable. OK. Back to the original X chip - and everything's fine again.

So contacted the chip seller, who agreed to send me a replacement K. He sent me 2 of them, actually, and commented on using cheap Chinese toner.... When I told him I only used the EA-HG stuff, all he could say was, "I see......." I told him I was very glad he could, because I couldn't see anything!
(He refunded the money from the second set of chips without me even asking - nice guy.)

Does anyone have any idea what might be going on here?


And about chips - how do they work? Are they just RFIDs that send a code to the printer, indicating a new chip that the computer hasn't seen before, therefore a new cart?

Does the memory in the machine count out 6000 sheets and say I'm out of ink? Or is that stored in the chip itself?

I just bought a used cart to refill - it came yesterday, and I installed it just for kicks. The ad said it might come w/ a bit of toner in it, but evidently not too much, because the printer told me it was already almost empty. So does that mean the info is stored in the chip?

Whatever anyone can help me understand, TIA!!!
Lloyd

[northernThaiguy]

Well, nobody's commented on the problem with the printer, but I have found out a few things about the Xerox chips.
They are RFIDs, and there are both high and low frequency ones. They store info in themselves, and the printer's memory can store info about 2 sets of chips at a time.

I used to have an Epson 7600 wide-format printer and remembered being able to reset the chips on that machine w/ a small electronic box. A Korean company named TNCore.com makes a chip resetter for laser printers that's called i-PROG X2. It's possible to reset the chips on partially used toner cartridges with this small machine, and just keep the same ones going for ever and ever (???).

That's about all I've learned so far. Now, if only someone can help me understand what's going on in the printer....