What is inside Ink Protection Circuit?

[Ichan]

Any one knows?

Is it only memory or micros?
How to write it?

-ichan

[oldvan]

I've heard that HP cartridges use a fusible link cooled by the ink itself.

The hypothesis was based on the observation that refilling the cartridges
early (before they got below 20%) allowed them to work through multiple
refills, but one time of them getting low permanently disabled them.

I'd like to see the hypothesis tested by disassembling one and finding the
hardware, but I don't own an inkjet printer (laser instead) and am not that
anxious to make a huge mess.

[pushycat]

Yes..i do agree with "Oldvan" as i had similar encounter long back when i tried to refill my Lexmark inkjet printer cartridge. The original yielded me about 100-150 pages and when i injected external ink from a refill pack, both the inks coagulated to form a thick paste and the nozzle which was giving out traces of the original ink, now clogged and the catridge was totally unusable.
I have not ventured deep in to the electronic protection systems implimented.

[pickit2]

I would look up your model of printer say on ebay. and see if they do a CISS Continuous Ink Supply. price for epson r285 cost me £14 and ink £12 still have 50% of ink, (this was the price I won the Items for, on ebay) this is alot cheaper the the cost of the 6 carts. and this has been running for 18 months with our a single spill of ink.

[Ichan]

The printer driver on my pc knows when i put a non original ink cartridge on the printer   (curious).

-ichan

[bbarney]

You can't always beleive the software either,at work an Hp deskjet said it was low on ink
we only use it for 2 page full color print-outs per job and that can be anywhere from 6 pages a day to 20 pages a day, anyways i ignored the warning and it was almost 8 months before the cartridge actually quit so don't be in a rush to change that cartridge when the software say that 

[Parmin]

I have "Epson chip resetter" bought in Shenzhen a few years ago.
It works for older model consumer cartridges only.

I think it is a type of micro or eeprom that can be set as the damn thing is used.

[pushycat]

The printer driver on my pc knows when i put a non original ink cartridge on the printer  (curious).

-ichan

This task is obviously done by the eeprom inside the cartridge, in conjunction with the hardwrae insid ethe printer an dthe driver which detects the cartridges only from the company to be genuine. I think this can be defeated, but not tried. This case is similar to the laptop batteries are controlled by similar technique to limit thier usage.