Today (Saturday) Epson has $200 off a Refurbished Pro 3880 - putting it at only $699. The ink carts are worth $425 on eBay. As long as you have a set of OEM chips on hand, you could sell the ink carts and pick up a spare 3880 printer for Pro for about $300.
At this point - a fix to unlock North American P800, P5000 and higher is unlikely to happen as the block is not in firmware and not in the chip…
Just saying!
Just curious, how do they accomplish the block?
They are tracking chip IDs and 3rd party carts only have one chip ID (the same). Resetting does not change the chip ID.
With 9 positions and at least 30 different chip IDs per color position, your chance of installing the same set of OEM chip IDs is less than one in a billion. When the printer identifies a repeat chip ID - it disables that ID from ever being used.
Now where is that damn circuit? Some say a Motherboard swap out with a UK version could do it.