How to fix a Brother DCP-J105 Print head not printing Black and other Tricks

November 18, 2018November 18, 2018 stephen Hardware Leave a comment

Ever replaced and ink cartidge on a Brother and it stops printing that colour? I had that problem after not using it for a while and the Brother DCP-J105 would no longer print black. I now have the solution of How to fix a Brother DCP-J105 not printing black. After a few weeks of trying, found success and can help you if you having been having issues. Let’s start

I have one of these damn great things (Brotehr DCP-J105):

I had left it in an outside room for about a year and ants had got into it and layed eggs etc. So I unpacked it and opened it up and cleaned it out as best I could.

I then saw that it was not printing black, so I bought a new cartridge. After putting it in and printing it still was not printing black.

I did a test print and all other colours worked except black.

It is always a good idea to at least try the manufacturers website and see what they suggest to fix black on a Brother DCP-J105. The solutions didn’t work for me.

So I tried a youtube video that showed a cleaning kit and using a syringe to push cleaning fluid into the palce the ink usually goes. I did that with my home made cleaning fluid (alcohol) and a syringe and it didn’t really work. Still no black. In that video the british bellend said that if it does not push black ink out the print head your printer is most likely dead. Well joke is on him, all is not lost, it still may be alive.

I search the internet again today and found a post on how to clean a Borther DCP-J105 not printing black:

It was to blow compressed air into the same place where ink goes and that would unblock it.

I did this with a straw and my own breath (pauper lifestyle) and miraculously a few lines of black now print. After doing a print test page a few dots of black now print.

I cleaned it and printed a few black ink test pages and it is gradually getting more black spots. The goal is to have that entire block coloured black.

So I cleaned it 2 times in a row now and a few more dots/lines appeared. Note: Cleaning the Brother DCP-J105 does waste ink.

I’m now going to clean it 5 times.

Dammit, now it is worse. Went from 70% full to 5 dots.

I printed a few pages and now I’m back to square one. Not a single black spot.

So I blew smoke up the ink shoot again and nothing.

I cleaned it 2 times in a row manually and it now was 95% filled.

I printed pages and in 5 pages ink decreased to nothing.

Other Tricks

Ink running low, Ink Not Detected Error

I got this information from this video:

Basically Brother tells you it no longer wants you half filled ink cartirdges. To them, half full is empty. Yet more evidence on how printers companies are legally scamming of regular people.

The error will say Printer Ink Not Detected for a specific colour when it is low (but not empty). Now you can’t print anything.

So all you need to do is black out the ink level window to trick the printer into thinking the cartridge is full. This will make your printer work.

This also has an added benfit in making your Brother DCP-J105 printer not show annoying out of ink or low level popups as they will always be full. You will of course need to refill or replace the cartridges when ink is not showing up on printed documents.

That said, the saving on printer cartidges and ink will more than pay for that inconvenience.

Do Not Use www.topgrades.co.za a.k.a Centaurus Trading to buy Kruger Rands

October 26, 2018 stephen Uncategorized Leave a comment

TLDR; Topgrades.co.za is no longer a member of Rand Refinery, their membership has been suspended. Take a look at all rand refinery registered dealers and make sure to only buy from people on this list

Investing in gold you can actually hold can be a very prudent investment espescially when global debt continues to rise and money is being created through this debt. However buying real gold that you can hold is the only way to be sure that you actually own gold. Merely buying gold shares or a Gold ETF will mean nothing in a global financial collapse. It is important to read the fine print of the contracts if you do prefer paper gold.

Nonetheless getting actual Kruger Rands can be tough because they are of high value and with high value comes risk. Certainly there will be a scammer for every legitimate coin dealer.

I had dealt with Centuarus Trading by buying through their topgrades.co.za website before and didn’t have much of an issue except that the order did take quite long to be fulfilled. This was in mid 2017. I had checked and they were a registered dealer.

A month ago I made another purchase, however this time it took 2 weeks without contact. I had to call the owner of Centaurus and ask him what was going on and he gave me the run around.

I then called Rand Refinery and was told that their membership was being reviewed after I noticed they were no longer on the registered coin dealers list. The next week I called Rand Refinery again and they told me that management had decided to suspend their account and I was to ask for a refund.

I asked for a refund and again a bit of a run around. It was not processed immediately I was told to wait 48 hours and then again for the following day.

The whole ordeal took 28 daysf from the day I EFT’ed into their account until I received the refund. Unfortunately it has left a bitter taste in my mouth and a dent in my growth prospects as Gold has rallied about R500 since the time of purchase.

When you are dealing with relatively large transactions it is important that everyone feels safe and secure but in this case I was worried by the shady activity and that it could be a scam.

At the end of the day it all worked out ok but I want to warn other people to avoid dealing with the following companies when it comes to Kruger Rands (Gold Bullion):

Centaurus Trading
MetalNexus
www.topgrades.co.za
www.goudwoud.co.za
www.centaurus-trading.com
www.sasilver.co.za
www.sagold.com

Also always ensure you test the authneticity of KrugerRands using the methods descrobe in the Rand Refinery Testing Guide.

Installing Ubuntu 18.04 for Dual Boot alongside Windows on seperate drives

September 27, 2018 stephen ubuntu Leave a comment

Alright you’ve had it with Windows and their horrible, data thieving, privacy breaching ways. But you still want to be able to use it because of other reasons. Well you can dual boot – boot into the platform of your choosing with sperate drives, I will be showing you how to do this,

This is going to be a quick guide to installing Ubuntu 18.04 Desktop for Dual Boot on seperate drives

Quick Steps for your Dual Boot Ubuntu 18.04 and Windows Desktop on Seperate Drives

Go to Download Ubuntu and click download Ubuntu desktop
Go through this tutorial to create a bootable USB with windows, it was a bit tricky as some options were different from the screenshots. I went with MSDOS, master boot record.
Make sure you have an empty drive at least 128gb for your ubuntu install.
Plug in the usb and restart your computer. Press F2 or del to get into the bios and ensure you are booting with your usb. Sometimes this will happen automatically.
Install it and make sure to allow third party software, I’ve had issues with not allowing it before.
When it comes to that scary screen about your isntallation options the best thing to do is click manual.
On your empty drive you want to put Ubuntu 18 on, it’ll be called sda or sdb, clear out existing partitions with-. Then add a parition for 300mb and change the type to Boot EFI this is the important part for the dual boot setup. Add another partition with + for the remaining amount of space you have and change the file system to ext4 and the mount point to /
Now continue, set the timezone and everything should be swell.