Review: SSC Service Utility

Don Bradbury looks at this useful free download for servicing Epson Stylus printers

Product	SSC Service Utility v 4.30
Company	SSC Localization Group
Web	www.ssclg.com
Price	Free
We like	Comprehensive options
We don't like	Explanations on the short side; non-English authorship apparent
Rating	9/10
Requirements	Windows 95/98/ME/2K/XP

Recently we found ourselves with an Epson PictureMate 6 x 4 photo printer that stubbornly refused to let us clear the 'cannot recognise the cartridge, please replace it' kind of dogmatic message we all just love to see on the current crop of chipped cart printers.

Now, we have to admit that the (genuine original) Epson cartridge had been reported empty for some time. It's not a good thing to allow this to happen as the heads then spend their time quietly drying out and hence clogging up.

The cartridge was also out of date - which the cart chip, clever thing, recognised - and reason enough for Epson wanting us to change it, though we think the user should be the final arbiter. So to find the dreaded message on display when we started up was no real surprise.

However, it was a surprise when we popped in a new genuine Epson T557 cart and still found the message on display. Time to turn to the Web to see what was on offer to clear such cartridge bad news.

Enter, stage left, the SSC Service Utility. This is a little program from a Russian guy who spends his time, apparently, undoing all the 'good' work of the folks at Epson.

The trouble with Epson printers in general, and no less so with the PictureMate model, is that the print heads are integrated into the machine itself, not the cartridge, so they are more subject to blockages than most others, and can be difficult or near-impossible to clear. The cart chip gets the message and refuses to let go. Well, it's all to the advantage of Epson cart sales, isn't it? After all, the average user isn't going to know that the heads will still be blocked, even with the new cart installed.

SSC To The Rescue

The SSC Service Utility is a free download that lets you reset or rewrite most Epson cart chips. It does several other useful things as well, such as letting you accurately check ink levels, freezing internal ink counters, and resetting the internal counters, even when they are empty.

There's a huge list of supported Epson models on the web site, and you should be careful that you download the correct release that supports your particular Epson model.

If you do, you'll find that you can not only reset or rewrite the chip under software control but also apply separate head cleaning routines when just one head requires cleaning. This is something you can't do with the wasteful Epson head cleaning routine - it hits all the nozzles the same, blocked or not, and that's why it's wasteful of ink.

You can also apply more powerful head cleaning if the heads are badly blocked - that's always worth a try, though you can't avoid the ink wastage that goes with it.

There are also routines for resetting protection counters, hot swapping carts and, all in all, just making more productive use of your expensive ink carts, squeezing more life out of them and maintaining them in ways that, perhaps, Epson don't really want you to do.

We tried several options in the SSC utility. The Soft Reset option probably did the job for us in the end in terms of preparing the PictureMate for a new cartridge - a compatible we had to hand, as it turned out! But the important thing is that the printer sprang to life again. Great!

In conclusion

This SSC Service Utility works under Windows 95/98/ME/2K/XP with, as usual, no mention of Vista as yet, and support is offered to both LPT and USB interface models. This free service utility is certainly worth a try before you really do sling your apparently defective printer in the rubbish bin. The English script, though obviously from an East European, is more or less understandable.

And speaking of understanding, figuring Epson chip messages is one thing, but getting rid of them is quite another. This little proggie did the job for us and may just do the job for you, too.

On a more general theme, with any printer problem it's worth a search for solutions on the Web. Use your browser, entering key words such as, in our case, 'epson service' (without the quotes) or something appropriate to yours.

 

Don Bradbury