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DIY Tutorial Resetting Toner Chip on Ricoh SP C250DN Printer in Simple Steps

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By Kaviyarasu Ramesh K-Tech

 DIY Tutorial Resetting Toner Chip on Ricoh SP C250DN Printer in Simple Steps


The RICOH SP 250DN printer toners have a chip that keeps track of the number of pages that have been printed. This is anoying because it will render a refill useless.


In order to reuse this kind of toner, there are two things you need to do:

  1. refill the toner with ink (if needed)
  2. reset the toner chip (or replace it)

There is plenty of information explaining how to refill the toner but little information on how to erase the toner chip.

This document deals with the second point: how to dump the chip and reset it.

It took me a while to get everything setup and to have my toner chip reset so I would like to share this process in order to help other to do the same with their printer toner cartridges.

I will step through the process of understanding the problem, analysing the chip circuit, dumping the chip contents and writing back a pattern so the printer will be able to initialize the chip and set the toner level to full.




My computer talks to the SP-204 printer via an Ethernet link. The printer communicates with the toner chip via the I2C bus.

+------------+           +-----------+            +-------------+
|    Host    |    ETH    |           |    I2C     |    toner    |
|  computer  | <-------> |  Printer  | <--------> |    chip     |
|            |           |           |            |             |
+------------+           +-----------+            +-------------+

What I did is connect an Arduino Pro mini directly to the toner chip like this:

+-----------+          +-----------+
|           |   I2C    |   toner   |
|  Arduino  | <------> |   chip    |
|           |          |           |
+-----------+          +-----------+

The I2C bus is very common on embedded systems. For example: smartphones use it to connect the touchscreen or the motion sensors to the main processor chip. There is plenty of documentation available on the Internet. 


If you are lucky enough that your toner chip is still working (printing), you can dump the content of the EEPROM before and after printing a page. This might give you clues about the EEPROM memory usage.

The process is like this:

  • read the EEPROM content,
  • make some changes base on a hypothesis,
  • write the content into the EEPROM,
  • try to print a page and restart if this does not work.

In order to speed up the process and not have to remove/reapply the chip to the toner cartridge every time, I directly connected my Arduino to the chip on the toner while resetting it.


DIY Tutorial Resetting Toner Chip on Ricoh SP C250DN Printer in Simple Steps




code:

// This code updates Ricoh Toner chip for Ricoh Aficio SP C250SF, SP C250DN, C250e, etc...
// Update EEPROM_I2C_ADDRESS define value with the chip you want to reprogram
// 83 is Chip K - black
// 82 is Chip C - cyan
// 81 is Chip M - magenta
// 80 is Chip Y - yellow

#define EEPROM_I2C_ADDRESS 83
#include <Wire.h>

// blank data for K, C, M & Y chip. 128 array of data. I got it from data dump of a replacement chip. 
byte KChipData[]={168,0,1,3,18,1,1,255,100,0,52,48,55,53,52,51,20,9,65,66,22,0,22,38,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,100,0,0,0,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0};
byte CChipData[]={168,0,1,3,14,2,1,255,100,0,49,49,49,53,52,54,20,2,65,66,23,0,7,1,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,88,48,56,54,80,52,48,49,50,48,56,0,68,0,0,0,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,0,0,1,85,0,18,0,40,0,5,184,230,50,0,128,0,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0};
byte MChipData[]={168,0,1,3,14,3,1,255,100,0,49,49,49,53,52,54,20,2,65,66,24,0,7,16,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,100,0,0,0,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0};
byte YChipData[]={168,0,1,3,14,4,1,255,100,0,49,49,49,53,52,55,20,2,65,66,25,0,3,7,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,100,0,0,0,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0};

void setup() {
  // Select correct data for chip then copy to WriteData array
  byte WriteData[128];
  switch (EEPROM_I2C_ADDRESS){
    case 83:
      memcpy(WriteData,KChipData,128*sizeof(byte));
      break;
    case 82:
      memcpy(WriteData,CChipData,128*sizeof(byte));
      break; 
    case 81:
      memcpy(WriteData,MChipData,128*sizeof(byte));
      break;
    case 80:
      memcpy(WriteData,YChipData,128*sizeof(byte));
      break;
    default: //default K chip data, no reason.
      memcpy(WriteData,KChipData,128*sizeof(byte));
      break;
  }
  
  // Start Wire and Serial bus
  Wire.begin();
  Serial.begin(9600);
  delay(100);

  Serial.println("Start");
  Serial.println(" ");

  // Start Write Chip with blank data
  Serial.println("Write 128 bytes:");
  byte wordaddress;

  for(byte i=0;i<128;i++){
        wordaddress = i;
        i2cwrite((byte)wordaddress,(byte)WriteData[i]);
        Serial.print(wordaddress);
        Serial.print(":");
        Serial.print(WriteData[i]);
        Serial.print(" ");
  }

  // Start Read chip
  Serial.println(" ");
  Serial.println("Read 128 bytes:");
  for(byte i=0;i<128;i++){
      byte readVale = i2cread(i);
      Serial.print(i);
      Serial.print(":");
      Serial.print(readVale);
      Serial.print(" ");
  } 
  Serial.println(" ");  
  Serial.println("End");

}

void loop() {

}

void i2cwrite(byte address, byte data) {
  Wire.beginTransmission(EEPROM_I2C_ADDRESS);
  Wire.write((byte)address);
  Wire.write((byte)data);
  Wire.endTransmission();
  delay(20);
}

byte i2cread(byte address) {
  byte rData = 0;
  Wire.beginTransmission(EEPROM_I2C_ADDRESS);
  Wire.write((byte)address);
  Wire.endTransmission();

  Wire.requestFrom(EEPROM_I2C_ADDRESS,1);
  while (Wire.available()){
    rData = Wire.read();
    return rData;
  }
}

void WhatI2CAddress() {
    for(int i=0;i<128;i++){
      Wire.requestFrom(i,1);  //request first data byte
      Serial.print(i);
      Serial.print(":");
      while(Wire.available()){
        byte c = Wire.read();
        Serial.print(c);      //if data exist, print it out. That way you can identify which address.
      }
      Serial.println(" ");
      delay(5);
  }
}

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