Refill and Reset the Canon MP150 Printer

 

Canon MP150

 

 

In my humble opinion, the Canon MP150 is the best printer available. If I were to enumerate the reasons, I would list them as:

1) The Canon MP150 is easy to refill

2) Its cartridges are easily available (At least in Mauritius, 2008)

3) No hassles, it prints flawlessly (unlike HP,Epson)

4) The printer can be reset via a series of button presses. (unlike HP,Epson. Some Epson users were so frustrated that an Epson reset utility had to be created. However, it supports only some select models. I am deeply sorry they do not own a Canon MP150) See below for more details how to reset the MP150.

5) The Canon CL-41 cartridge for the MP150 is just an ink tank. Unlike most Epson and HP (and some Lexmark) cartridges which have and embedded chip, the Canon ink tank is easy to refill. A chip on a cartridge is normally used by the manufacturer to ensure that the customer uses only genuine ink. Also, when an attempt to refill the cartridge is detected, the printer posts a message on the screen informing the user that his/her warranty is void. These tactics are usually for commercial ends to ensure that the company continues to earn money from accessories and replacement cartridges.

6) Its just..a Canon.

 

Since now, I have noticed only one downside from the Canon MP150. It will refuse to print in grayscale when the colour cartridge has been removed, even though you choose Print Black only from the Canon Preferences/Maintenance Tab. I have searched for any possible hack to force the apparatus to print in black, but in vain.

How to reset the Canon MP150 after a refill (Step 10 concerns refill; instructions below the steps):

Method1 (Safe Factory Method):

1) Disconnect the printer’s power outlet 

2) Press and hold the power button while connecting the power outlet back.
3) While still holding down the power button, press the reset button twice.(red circle with a triangle) 

4) Release the power button 

    The printer takes about 10 seconds to show the number 0. 

5) Press + to change the value from 0 to 1. 
6) When this value is 1, press colour button; this will light up two leds.

    One is for plain paper and the other for photo paper. At this point is feed the printer with paper. 
7) Press the power button, the color button then the Reset button in order. The Canon will print some stripped lines and some numbers and letters ( all black if colored ink is empty).

When you print this sheet the value in the display returns to zero.
8 ) Open the printer cover cover (not the scanner cover) and remove the cartridges. With the printer still open, disconnect the power outlet.
9) Close the lid, re-connect the printer to the power outlet and turn on the printer. 
10) Refill cartridges and place them back in their nice little abode in the printer.

Method2 (Use at you own risk – Hardware Manipulation):

This method works in Factory Mode. I have not personally tested it because I do not wish to void my warranty by reverse engineering my printer hardware. Nevertheless, if you have a stock of printers in the back of your garage and wish to experiment, give it a try. See below for instructions how to set the MP150 to Factory Mode.

Upgrade to the latest MP150 Driver (version1.10) and download MPTool here (Driver+Tool). This little software supports Pixma models MP150, MP160, MP170, MP180, MP450, MP460. MP150, MP160, MP170, MP180, MP450, MP460.

MPTool Reset

Features:

 

* Expanded information on the level of ink in the cartridge and containers for the waste of ink.
* Reading, recording and reset the printer EEPROM.
* Reset counters level for black and coloured ink cartridges.
* Clear the counters occupancy “core” and “supplementary” containers for the waste of ink.

Ink Level – shows the level of occupancy ink:
BK – black cartridge.
CY – colored ink cartridge Cyan.
MG – colored Magenta ink cartridge.
YL – Yellow colored ink cartridge.
WM – “core” container for the waste of ink.
WP – “additional” container for the waste of ink.
Port Name – displays the name of the printer port on the system.More info: here

Setting the MP150 to Factory Mode:
1) Turn off the printer on the network.
2) Click and hold power button.
3) Add a printer to the network.
4) Press cancel / resume printing.
5) Drop button. (If the system reports the discovery of “new device”, install the printer driver; after the installation is complete name the new printer as “Canon MPXXX Factory Mode”).

How to refill? Check this picture:

 

How to refill the Canon MP150

For best results, wait 8 hours so that the ink settles to the ink head.

I hope this helps to make this world printer friendly. If this articles has made you less frustrated today, post a comment.

Update:
Corrected Method 1, Step 7. Thanks to Jun dela Cruz (Philippines) for the update.

Any questions?

How-to Dual Boot Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron and Windows (NT/XP/Vista)

Step one:

Say you have a 40GB hard drive. Install Windows choosing 20GB (or greater, but keep at least 10 GB for ubuntu). I am not giving screen-shots for the Windows installation, because i guess that everyone knows about that. The setup procedures are well explained there anyway, but if you have any problems, post a comment, I shall edit this article.

Step 2:

Windows is installed. Now boot on your Ubuntu 8.04 CD in Live CD mode and launch the install icon that is displayed on the desktop.

Step3:

Enter your Time Zone settings:

Then, your Keyboard Layout settings:

Step 4:

This is the most important part. I will discuss the manual partitioning to avoid dramatic, irreversible cases where you lose everything in your other partitions. So, choose manual partition in the list:

(Note: The rest of the tutorial refers to Manual partitioning.)

Step 5:

Create three partitions out of the<i>free space</i> you can see.

One will be swap (set it to 512mb-this is more than enough)

The other one is a small ext3 partition (put it 50Megs) and mount it to /boot (Very important to do that!!)

Then the rest will be all the free space available; use ext3 as file-system and mount it to ‘/’

Step 6:

Proceed with the installation as you would normally. The most difficult part has been done. On reboot, you will notice a nice and beautiful Boot list.

Post comments if that helped you. This article will keep updating.

TJ- Helping the Free community yet again – Use Fedora..

Updates:

Added a screenshot of the manual partition window.

Article now focusses on dual booting Ubuntu Hardu Heron

First time Ubuntu 7.10 with Dual Boot.

Greetings,

If you are in a hurry and expert already, you may skip this piece of literature and hop to the next article which describes how to manually partition your hard-drive that already contains a windows NTFS partition. Okay guys, 7.10 was released today, and though I’m a Fedora/RedHat 100% fanatic, I have decided to test the new Gutsy on my Dell Optiplex 170L machine. To be frank, I never liked the Ubuntu Family. I reckon that Canonical and Sons are doing great charity by giving away Free CDs but really Ubuntu ain’t inspiring. I am not going to criticise the people who use it by any means nor belittle the the engineers behind Ubuntu.

Firstly, Ubuntu isn’t a name that vibes well in my ears (sorry for the pessimistic touch; Fedora sounds cool..RedHat as well..Novell a little, Suse a little as well..:), but not the African word Ubuntu. I don’t know why really. Is Fedora an American word? )

Anyway, I have got some really bad experiences in the past with Ubuntu. For instance, it will never install on my Acer laptop, taking hours and hours to go by the 7 steps of installation, and then hanging at 15% during disc partitioning. That was totally frustrating. It is during that time that I came to know RedHat Enterprise Linux 4 and adored it. It was great fun to set up LAMP, DNS, and web servers on the RedHat machine. I finally dropped Ubuntu completely; no more debian..

I appreciated RedHat’s decision to supply DVDs with all the repositories unlike Ubuntu CDs which contained the strict minimum. Furthermore, you need to have a good bandwidth to start downloading all your favourite software, updating them etc..

A month later, I laid my hands upon the Hot Fedora 7. That was the beginning of a new linux adventure. I had all my servers (apache and postgresql amongst others) working perfectly while my friends still on debian were struggling. (That made me happier..lol)

And just to get a touch of debian again (sadly, you have to know everything in this world..-_-’ ), I have downloaded the new Gutsy Gibbon 7.10 on the launch date itself ( I guess I’m the first one to get it in my country…lol..ok just kidding), trying a dual boot with my Windows XP Service Pack2. After 4 setup trials, I finally managed to get GRUB working (yeah Dual Booting in Ubuntu ain’t friendly at all, unlike in RedHat which detects windows partitions right during setup, and asks you how you want your bootloader to be..).