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Comment by samlinnfer | Hacker News Reader

I want to see this confirmed before we hop into it. I've been using aftermarket toner with Brother all the time and it's working well. All the posts on Louis' wiki (https://wiki.rossmanngroup.com/wiki/Brother_ink_lockout_%26_...) are 2-3 years old and the only primary sources from people on reddit and there are a total of 3 people saying this. He's long winded video adds nothing new, this tomshardware article just repeats what he says in the video.

Literally these are the only three sources I can find of people claiming this:

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/printers/comments/s9b2eg/brother_mf...

2. https://github.com/sedrubal/brother_printer_fwupd/issues/9

3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131

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Hi. Maybe anecdotal, Brother MDC-J480DW, had it about 3 years, always bought third party ink, two weeks ago I had to replace the color ones and it started saying there was no ink even though ink was clearly visible, it failed on two different colors from two different sources, and the three different black cartridges, then bought legit from Walmart and worked perfectly. I can’t speak for everyone’s experience, but mine was definitely changed recently to always say third party ink was empty, and I’ll junk it once this ink runs out.

Worth noting that this looks like a different issue. You're reporting high ink level not being accepted, but the other post reports high misalignment.

I don't know about every Brother model. On ours, there's a key sequence you can press to reset the toner cartridge odometer letting you squeeze out toner until the text is a satisfying light grey.

I use a J480DW and had the EXACT SAME ISSUE last month. Ordered a different brand of aftermarket cartridges and they worked like a charm. Maybe a supplier issue.

I've had the MFC-J480DW for many years and have been happy with the cheap generic ink cartridges I've been able to use. I'm getting worried about what I'm reading here. I have it connected by USB to my PC, and I don't know if it gets any updates from the PC.

I can confirm this. A Brother HL-L3270CDW color laser worked fine with third-party toner at first, but would not recognize it after a firmware upgrade. I tried three different sets of cartridges, including different brands - none were recognized, and there's no way to revert to a previous firmware version.

That was the last Brother color printer I'll buy, unless they go back to accepting generic toner.

There's a way to rollback the firmware for this family of models, check out on the internets. I did it, and it solved the same issue for me.

Some useful links I remember using back then:

https://www.reddit.com/r/printers/comments/qcstzv/downgrade_... (in German)

https://github.com/CauldronDevelopmentLLC/oh-brother/issues/...

https://www.reddit.com/r/printers/comments/w60687/comment/ih...

https://www.reddit.com/r/printers/comments/w9bc3g/downdgradi...

> That was the last Brother color printer I'll buy

What are the alternatives then? Brother is often cited as the brand that is the most tolerant of generic consumables and with the least anti-consumer practices. But now that even Brother plays this game...

I have that printer, and I was about to buy some third party toner for it (first time). What firmware version disabled third-party toner support? Looks like we have 1.35. I just disabled automatic "check for updates" but maybe it's too late.

So what do we buy instead? Brother was the last not-evil printer company I knew of.

Last time we changed ours (recently, maybe a few months) it gave us a message saying we were using untrusted ink and it now prints a black line down one side of the page. First time I’ve had any issues in years. TBH my first reaction was that it was some kind of intentional effort to degrade the experience.

Have you checked with another third party ink to validate that it's not just a single broken cartridge?

I can add an anecdote that it ("it" being printer stopped functioning when I replaced the cartridge with as 3rd party I've) happened to me and support confirmed that non OEM toner was the issue when I called about it.

Swapping the drm chip from the oem starter cartridge to my 3rd party cartridge resolved the othe problem

...until the starter cartridge's low page count reaches zero (I hope I'm wrong).

Hasn't happened to me yet, but there are apparently ways if resetting the counter.

For clarification, is “it” a Brother printer or another brand?

Yes, two different models (both Brother). Can't remember the model numbers right now, but a simple black and white printer, and a black and white + scanner model.

Wow that sucks, I thought that Brother didn't engage in this shady practice. Guess I'll have to stick to older (discontinued) models that were released before that.

I tried that with mine, swapped chips from original Brother toner set to the aftermarket one and it didn't work.

I bought Brother printer HL-3220CW and it doesn't work with 3rd party toners. It didn't even have new firmware.

I also have HL-3230CDW that I bought few years ago and aftermarket toner works fine.

Seems like they must have done it to the newer printers.

The new printer is completely uneconomical. I had to pay around £150 for Brother set of toners, whereas aftermarket for my older printer is just £35. The quality is the same.

The problem with printer recommendations is that many vocal supporters are running older models that work like charm, so when a good company becomes enshittified, there will be some timelag until consensus shifts. I mean I could still praise Samsung printers despite Samsung having left the printer business years ago.

There are a lot of similar anecdotes in this thread, but I'm still skeptical. I've had similar issues with my Brother printer randomly not accepting a new toner cartridge and telling me that it's empty. It happened twice. In one case, I had to use some obscure button combination to force it to reset and then everything was fine. In another case, I needed to remove and reseat the cart a dozen times before it suddenly worked.

Anyway, it's definitely possible that these newer issues are Brother doing something nefarious, but I could also see a lot of these issues being with finicky sensors.

I used to buy Brother for exactly this reason,but recently had an older (but upgraded) Brother not recognise 3rd-party toner :(

So ... not HP, not Brother ... anyone left that sells reasonable printers with honest firmware?

At this point, like with many things, you'll have to go model by model and not trust a whole company to do something right. I have several of the Netgear R6220 router running OpenWrt, but Netgear as a whole tends to not have OpenWrt support, so I would never blindly recommend someone buy Netgear. Instead I'd say to look at the Table of Hardware on OpenWrt's site. That being said, a list of "good" printers somewhere would be fantastic. I have an old HP monochrome laser printer (sorry to be part of the problem, don't have the model handy, may edit it in later) I got at a thrift store, it happily accepted some very cheap toner I got from eBay. I understand everyone has hated HP printers for years, though I think it's mostly the inkjet models.

In a recent Louis Rossmann video that covered this Brother printer issue, there were some suggestions in the comments, Minolta if I remember correctly.

https://youtu.be/bpHX_9fHNqE?si=pxf2eQW0cMRbds0m

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