What Does the Epson Chip Resetter Do? How Does it Work?

One of the largest expenses that a computer user has, once they are set up and ready to go, is replacing the ink cartridges when they are empty. The printers themselves have been offered at low or no cost. This is called a loss leader. Printer manufacturers understand that they are not really in the business of manufacturing printers for profit, they are in the business of manufacturing printer ink. Once you have their printer you must buy their ink at steep prices.

Not sneaky enough

Fortunately for computer users, and not for printer ink manufacturers, a way has been found to refill ink cartridges without paying the steep prices of the ink manufacturers. The ink manufacturers are not happy about this.They fought back with smart computer chips that let only their ink cartridges work in their printers when they are filled or manufactured by their licensed printer ink companies.This was sneaky, but not sneaky enough.

It is full

In the case of Epson Printers, a device has been invented that “resets” the computer chip that says the ink cartridge is a real Epson ink cartridge that was bought at full price, and not a refilled cartridge. This devise is called a “chip resetter.” What the chip resetter does is tell the “smart chip”, which Epson installs in its printers, that the ink cartridge is a new cartridge. Essentially the smart chip is fooled, by the chip resetter into thinking that the empty cartridge it is holding is new and licensed as such. All you need to do is remove the cartridge, refill it and reinstall it into the Epson printer. You are set to go.

This is all fairly straight forward. Plug the chip resetter into your Epson printer and away you go. It identifies the ink cartridge model number,to make sure it will work on that particular cartridge and chip, looks for possible damage to the cartridge and chip and lets you know that the smart chip has been reset to full status instead of empty status.

A few things to think about

There are a few things to consider when thinking about a chip resetter. First, it works for quite a few model printers and model cartridges but not all. Check to make sure your printer is compatible. Second, the folks that came up with the chip resetter need to make a living too so the resetter won’t work forever.

Computers May Be Slowing Down

In 1965 Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel, wrote a paper that made the observation that computers will double in speed every two years. This maxim, now called Moore’s Law, has held true for decades. It would appear now however that within the next ten years Moore’s Law may no longer be valid.

Moore’s Law specifically refers to the number of transistors that can be placed on a computer chip, and how that number could easily be doubled by manufacturers every two years. Manufactures have readily met the requirements of this law since its inception, and as of 2008 the transistors that are applied to computer chips will be so small that over 3.9 million of them would fit on the head of a pin.

Gordon Moore now says that by 2020 the laws of physics will catch up to computer chip manufacturers and Moore’s Law will no longer be a valid measuring tool. Mr. Moore revealed this information while speaking about the new Intel chip being marketed as the Penryn Processor. This new chip will not be widely available till 2009, and its circuitry is 45 nanometers wide (1 billionth of a meter wide) and contains over 800 million transistors.

The fact that Moore’s Law specifically refers to number of transistors and not computing speed has now become important. The two have been used interchangeably for decades, but it would seem that can no longer be the case. Many experts believe that although the laws of physics will break down Moore’s Law, computing speed will continue to increase at the same rate or possible even faster. This will be done through alternative methods of chip manufacturing. One type of alternative manufacturing is called nanotechnology which would focus on putting chips together a single molecule at a time. Jim Tully at Gartner group said, “You might refer to this new breed of chips as ‘molecular devices’”. Science fiction may become science fact over the next decade as these molecular devices are even now in development.

While faster chips are a concern for the manufactures, utilizing this speed is the concern of the end user. Chips that contain billions of transistors are irrelevant if the software the computer is running cannot take advantage of the speed. This has been the case with Windows XP of late, and one of the reasons Microsoft released Vista. The new software is designed to take better advantage of newer and faster chips as well as higher degrees of computer memory. “Although the Vista 32 bit version only uses up to 4 gig of RAM (same as XP), the Vista 64 bit version can support 128 gig of RAM or more”, says Dan Crawford, former Microsoft employee and software enthusiast. There are no PCs currently capable of actually accepting 128 gig of RAM so this issue should be moot for a long time.

Once software producers catch up to the chips available even now, the speed in which users enjoy on there computers will be greatly increased. Chip speed is still an important concern, but perhaps not more so than the ability to actually utilize that speed on a regular basis.

Computer on a Chip

Welcome to Computer on a Chip. The term computer-on-a-chip refers to integrating all components of a computer or other electronic system into a single integrated circuit (chip).

Computer on a Chip (COC) designs usually consume less power and have a lower cost and higher reliability than the multi-chip systems that they replace. And with fewer packages in the system, assembly costs are reduced as well. We’ve even heard of a “lab on a chip” which will take CSI Miami or CSI Las Vegas and put them on steroids!

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As computers continue to shrink in size – processing power increases, in both speed an capacity. Computer on a Chip explores this shrinking world of computers, with computer videos and computer articles. Please also join in the conversation about the future of computers.

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