They use the small flash inside the DRM chip in the cartridge to store the telemetry, then the e-waste companies are paid by HP to read and send to the mothership the contents of the chips sent to recycle
There is not a day that goes by that I don’t wish open source 2d printers where technically easy to make.
I don’t know about being easy to make but it may be easy to buy one soon-ish.
Open Printer (Crowd Supply campaign coming soon).
Yeah, I saw that around. It looks really fucking cool, but it still relies on a proprietary print head IIRC.
I don’t want to be perfectionist, it is a good step in the right direction, so I do still appreciate the project. I especially appreciate that it uses paper rolls instead.
Those motherfuckers bricked my printer after 100 pages in 2020, presumably for refusing to sign up for their ink subscription. Really pissed me off to have to throw out a perfectly good printer.
I’m never buying another HP product.
I also stopped buying HP for a nearly identical reason. My brand new printer was 1 day out of warranty, I had gotten it as a gift unboxed it, and it wouldn’t connect to Wi-Fi (had no hardware ports on it only WiFi).
Those fuckers told me I could either:
A. Subscribe to their ink subscription plan and they’d tell me how to fix it.
B. Pay $75 one time and they’d tell me how to fix it.
I threw that motherfucker in the trash that day and then bought a cheap Cannon (no brothers in stock) that still works over a decade later.
Fuck HP completely.
What morons are buying HP printers?
Oh how the mighty have fallen.
Back in the day the HP Laserjet 2 was the bees knees. They were wicked workhorses that just kept going and going no matter what. Sold a ton of them when they were new.
Fast forward a number of yrs and I went into used computer biz early on with a couple people. Did great. Had this trend of hubbys cleaning out basements at wife’s request bringing in none other than old Laserjet 2’s. Business’ loved them and would buy them soon as we had them. Put an ad in computer papers saying bring in your old HPLJ2’s top dollar. Cleaned and fixed up and they flew out the door. Now you could not pay me to use HP.
So what I need to do if I own an HP printer when it’s at end of life is set it on fire in a blast furnace?
As someone that’s worked on them, id recommend just starting out with the blast furnace. It’ll save a ton of headaches down the line.
