DS4231 eeprom hack

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#1

Hello community!

I have a portable cable label printer (BRANDY BMP61). Since the cable labels are small, the printer only uses a small portion of the width of the ink ribbon. So when it run out, I flipped the ribbon the other way to reuse it, since the ink is there!

It worked great for a couple of prints until the message “out of ribbon” appeared. Turns out the ribbon has a chip (DS4231 eeprom) that ‘knows’ how much ribbon is left.

I managed to read the eeprom and write on it (I wrote exactly the hex values of a new ribbon that I bought) but still it doesn’t work. So there must be something else that identifies to the printer that this ribbon is used. Does anyone have any ideas how to solve this?

Thanks for your time,

#2

It’s a 128 byte chip

Read an old and a new cartridge and compare, see what is different.

#3

Hi @CrossRoads ! Thanks for your reply.

I did exactly that, and all the 128 hex values that I read, I copied to the old one but this it wouldn’t work. Is there maybe another value that I’m not reading or another way to differentiate between two different chips?

#4

I don’t know. Check the datasheet, maybe there are some other addresses they play some games with.

#5

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