zakezuke : a quick thankyou

[Martin]

For anyone else this is going to sound like jibberish but Zakezuke has
mentioned in passing a few times about how Canon printers can be set to
the wrong locale, eg: Japan which use a different cartridge type, etc...

Now, I just picked up a bargain MP500 (yes, that makes two for anyone
keeping count) for £26 (about $40US) because someones daughter pressed
lots of buttons and the printer suddenly refused to accept the printer
cartridges in it (PGI-5 and CLI-8's).

I remembered the whole thing zake mentioned about Japan being different
and this looked Japanese so I grabbed a copy of the MP500 service manual
and after some misunderstandings along the way was able to reset the
location to Europe and lo' my £26 has been translated into a fully
operational MP500 that now recognises the CLI-8 and PGI-5 cartridges
again.. Oh and "speaks" English too which is nice


Anyways, Zake, just wanted to say thanks... that little nugget of yours
was a real good one and helped enormously... Cheers.

 

[zakezuke]

I remembered the whole thing zake mentioned about Japan being different
and this looked Japanese so I grabbed a copy of the MP500 service manual
and after some misunderstandings along the way was able to reset the
location to Europe and lo' my £26 has been translated into a fully
operational MP500 that now recognises the CLI-8 and PGI-5 cartridges
again.. Oh and "speaks" English too which is nice


Anyways, Zake, just wanted to say thanks... that little nugget of yours
was a real good one and helped enormously... Cheers.

No worries, for your next assigment you will buy some Japanese ink for
roughly £3.90 each color cartridge rather than the usual £6.49,
though having the mp500, I'd guess to use them would require not only
having the menus on the printer in Japanese, but having the Japanese
driver and Japanese support installed.

Granted I don't know where to buy bci-7e cartridges, and most people
are unhappy with equipment that displays only in Japanese, even if it's
just Katakana for an english word save an extra vowel. I'm not sure on
the shipping charges as Amazon stopped shipping them from Japan, and I
don't really know Japanese all that well. I'm sure if I speak of it
often enough an enterprising person there would decide to make a buck
on e-bay. Near as i'm aware, the non multifuctionals can deal with the
yanky driver, but not having Japanese cartridges I can't test the
theory.

 

[Martin]

No worries, for your next assigment you will buy some Japanese ink for
roughly £3.90 each color cartridge rather than the usual £6.49,
though having the mp500, I'd guess to use them would require not only
having the menus on the printer in Japanese, but having the Japanese
driver and Japanese support installed.

Granted I don't know where to buy bci-7e cartridges, and most people
are unhappy with equipment that displays only in Japanese, even if it's
just Katakana for an english word save an extra vowel. I'm not sure on
the shipping charges as Amazon stopped shipping them from Japan, and I
don't really know Japanese all that well. I'm sure if I speak of it
often enough an enterprising person there would decide to make a buck
on e-bay. Near as i'm aware, the non multifuctionals can deal with the
yanky driver, but not having Japanese cartridges I can't test the
theory.

Well, stranger things have happened I guess.. If the opportunity arises
I'll certainly try... It did occur to me though that even though it's a
Japanese printer there will be some consumers there who want it to speak
English so while the printer may well start in Japanese it may well
still be settable to the other language options.

One day we may find out

Thanks again...

 

[zakezuke]

Well, stranger things have happened I guess.. If the opportunity arises
I'll certainly try... It did occur to me though that even though it's a
Japanese printer there will be some consumers there who want it to speak
English so while the printer may well start in Japanese it may well
still be settable to the other language options.

You would "think". But I know on the mp760 if you set the printer to
Euro, upon reboot it will ask you the language. If you set it to
Japanese, it doesn't bother, it just assumes Japanese. And where you'd
expect to be able to select the printer's display langague, that menu
option apears to be missing. Add to this the fact that if you have
your PC set to Japanese support the drivers popup and display in
Japanese without asking. This would include the mp780, you must
disable Japanese support for it to install in anything not Japanese.

While I'm sure there are people in Japan who would prefer something
other than Japanese, this would seem to be an oversite. Just like you
can't buy a current canon in japan, take it elsewhere, and expect it to
work with the local cartridges.