The funny thing about the old computer game box art was that it seemed that the worse the game's graphics the more vivid, detailed, and colorful the box art. This is true, though I think the first generation TI games used somewhat accurate cover art, well, until they switched to the white cartridges and suddenly the worse the game's graphics were, the better the cover art was.
This was the time period that VGA was getting off the ground. But if I recall correctly, there was no standard for 8bit 640*480. A lot of games were geared toward a specific graphics chipset. I have had NO experience running these games in the 21st century, but I imagine unless you have the hardware or hardware emulation you might be stuck with this games being playable only in 4bit color.
Now at least games for mainstream systems have emulators, and the hardware is pretty cut and dry. This would include Atari, Commodore, Amiga, Mac, Sega, Nintendo, and others. Someone with a stronger background in late 80s early 90s PC games might be able to say what chipsets were commonly used.
I imagine that many have nostalgia over this time period. I'm the first to say there are a ton of games which are classic that helped to shape the modern gaming universe. But to me PC games from this time period were just a royal pain in the butt as they needed the graphics card I didn't own, and the sound card I didn't own.
If I was sitting around in 1980 and wanted to buy games for their collector's value... I would go for the most popular one, or ones that showed innovation. At the time I would thought Space Invaders, Atlantis, Pitfall. Presently you can find most of these titles at a flee market.
The main problem I see is the fact that software is easy to copy. Presently you can download most of the 2600 games. I've seen huge collections of 8bit computer games.
It's not like a comic book at the time wasn't easy to copy. But honestly I never could grok the comic market either, or baseball cards.
Also, the RCC still uses public humiliation as a tool for control e.g. get a divorce and you can't take part in communion - you are deliberately singled out of the community as being less deserving than everyone else. I wouldn't go as far as saying it's public humiliation. They don't shout it on the PAs "Bob can't take communion". It's more private humiliation, on the edge of public humiliation, which one can argue is worse. This presumes one finds divorce humiliating.
I don't know the ins and outs of it, I think technically to get the Jesus Wafer after divorce, you have to get the marriage annulled. I also doubt that all priests pay attention since about 1/2 of all marriages end in divorce.
Contact your friendly neighborhood MP. From my limited understanding the hate speech laws are not intended to prevent people from being critical of a religion, not that Scientology is classified as a religion in the UK, or at least it's not a charitable organization.
Whats the difference between religions and cults? As far as I can tell they really are the same thing. Cult = Small unpopular religion Religion = Large Popular cult.
Cult is a root in cultivate, where all religions were at one point cults. However in popular use cults tend to benefit a majority of people, where religious are institutions whose goal is to benefit society. I'm not saying that their methods always benefit society, but that's the ideal. Also cults tend to be secretive. For example, you ask a Christian their beliefs, they'll tell you they believe in a guy who walked on water, healed the sick, turned water into wine, and rose from the dead. You ask a cult their beliefs and practices and they won't answer you.
A true clone would have EFI firmware, not EFI emulation. It would require no hacks to install OS X, it would cleanly install and be recognized by the OS. This is where I am confused.
IBM released the PC. Compaq cloned the bios, followed by everyone including your mother, mother's brother, neighbor, neighbor's dog. The rest of the PC was based on open specifications so poof, you have clones. Clones became the standard.
Ok, now the 21st century. EFI was an intel invention, currently managed by the Unified EFI forum. Is apple's implantation of EFI is unique? If not, it wouldn't be a clone would it?
Look for the notch down the side... Cardbus cards have a slightly bigger botch, such that they won't physically fit into old PCMCIA slots.... Useful info. I know this personally. It helps you find one so long as there is an accurate image of the card on the box or the website. Doesn't help you out if
1) The website doesn't have a good picture 2) The boxes are behind glass
I know I spent a fair amount of time hunting around CompUSA for one. They had them lumped in with the other cardbus ones. You can buy a card based on model number and get what you need, but without that information it's a crap shoot.
Also... Cardbus won't fit into MOST older laptops. I stress the most. I know this personally as I had a pentium 166 laptop that could physically accept a Cardbus card, but it wasn't. For the life of me I can't remember the model. But I bought a PCMCIA 4 port usb adapter. Useful device, if it wasn't cardbus. Fit just fine, but as it turns out the laptop didn't support cardbus.
There's no difference between PCMCIA and PC Card; the standard was officially renamed to the latter because (it was thought) it was an easier & more approachable name. Thanks, I sort of figured but didn't want to claim to know.
It's still acronym hell
PCMCIA - what you "would" look for in a 16 bit wifi card, if this acronym was in use when WiFi hit the market (It might not have). But I've seen this advertised.
PC Card - What you need if you need a 16 bit card, if all that were labled as PC Card were 16 bit. Many are card bus.
CardBus - What you know for a fact won't work. If the box says this, you know it won't work.
Plus you have all these pesky people who don't know which is which, so they pick an acronym which may or may not be accurate.
...but the fact that there exist Wi-Fi cards for its 16-bit PCMCIA slot does score it extra points You know, this is true. There are non cardbus PC cards. They are a real pain to find. If they know what they are the price goes up, but you might get lucky and find a shop with the them next to the other regular WIFI cards. You might also get lucky and find someone on craigslist who is selling one.
Why a pain? Acronym hell! PCMCIA/PCCard/CardBus. To be honest I don't know the difference between PCMCIA and PCCard (is there one?), but I sure know the difference between PCCard and Cardbus. But the problem is everything is advertised as PCCard, whether it's PCCard or Cardbus.
I was never really into comic books
on
Iron Man Released
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I never was really into comic books - so I have no knowledge or concerns as it relates to following the original story line. As much as I'm sure there were excellent stories in comic books... I can't say I was all that into comic books my self. You had to get it monthly or else be dropped out of the story line. I discovered decent comic book stores later on and it was at least possible to pickup "some" older issues, but you had to get there. If you lived in a major city not an issue, but if you lived in a smaller town... forget about it.
I think there was an option to mail order comics but... but dollar per page was rather high, and story per month was pretty low.
Regardless... I found the format to be a huge hassle.
It's part of their EZ share line. The black is $10 with 400p @ 5% yield at least in the states. I'm not truly excited about the cost per page, but it is reasonable. The printer uses a technique similar to canon, detachable thermal head. It offers a multi color tank, as I recall three primaries and a clear, perhaps an additional black. Color and black are pigment. It's no Epson, but the price is a fair bit more reasonable even in contrast to their dye models.
Oh, near as I'm aware they only offer all in ones.
I appreciate the problem with contrast though, terrible for professional docs but for code it's a blessing, takes the strain off the eyes. Odd, I find that if I use low contrast ink, I have a harder time looking at the words after extended periods, I look at the paper fibers.
Sorry to hear about your Canon ip4300... in the states Canon has a VERY liberal warranty policy. They ship out replacement heads even after the warranty is expired. They accept warranty returns based on phone interviews.
While ml per yield is high, dollars to output is pretty reasonable for black. Not as reasonable as the ip4000 series (bci-3eBK). Kodak offers an inkjet which has an average cost per black @ 2.5c/page @ 5% yield. However, I highly doubt that would beat your dot matrix.
"The cartridges last about 150 pages and absolutely saturate my paper. I tried different software to control it with but to no avail. As I mostly print code out I now print on an Epson LX300 24pin dot matrix. It cost me $30 from a dodgy repair shop down the road. The ribbons cost me $2.00 and print about 1100 sheets without fading."
That sounds very odd... not that I don't believe you... the Canons are rather high volume per yield printers. As in 25ml per 500pages @ 5% yield. That's in par with HP 10 years ago. While that is a fact.. I can't say I've noticed truly saturated paper just printing text. I would guess you are using some type of onion skin paper, like old school dot matrix, not your average 20lb paper.
I'd like to say with bulk ink the price is on par with ribbons. The price you seem to be paying is slightly less if one were to buy 4oz of bulk ink for $10.00.
I got into a 24 pin when the feature set was decent. I think it was a panasonic 2124 IIRC. It had a color ribbon, dual feeds, and plain or tractor feed. But the contrast was never on par with inkjet or laser... but running black ribbons it was pretty cheap to operate... but once you factored in the cost of a laser's replacement parts, I have to admit the dot matrix was indeed cheaper.
I don't think third party ink providers are going to be around much larger. That whole industry is run like the mob. I don't say that to troll either, i'm serious. They are very competitive and the major manufacturers do just about everything they can to stop third party providers. Well, the ink it self I imagine will continue to be produced, since there are already major ink production factories in the business. Plus you have to take into account the fact that cartridges are protected by patent which is only for 20 or 14 years (I'm not sure IANAPL). The companies can kick and scream as much as they like, as soon as the patents die everyone can produce replacement cartridges including complex printhead like HP. Not that 14-20 year old printers are that popular.
Then you have the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act which would suggest it's our product and we have a right to shove anything we want into it.
2) Me too. I've toyed with 3rd party ink on my iP4100 and it looks like crap, runs, and only costs a hair less than the real Canon stuff.
3) Yeah... This printer and my cold dead hands. I can even print on CDs with it (I live in Japan). Yes, the ink in japan is about 1/2 the cost it is here, according to amazon.co.jp. I'd consider going OEM ink if I could refill my tanks for $30ish. As it stands it's closer to $70ish.
CD printing is an option for American canons. details are on this site http://pixma.ulmb.com/ I'm not sure on the ip4500, no one as posted any info on that, but most models are supported, all you need is the tray.
You can easily make an extra buck in japan selling trays. They are not too spendy and ebay will give you 100% profit, and happy americans.
Couple of other questions: if I got the above package, would I still need a BCI-6Bk, or could it use the BCI-3eBk for all the black needs? Does anyone have a link to a page the explains the difference between BCI-3, BCI-3e, BCI-6, etc.? The bci-3eBK is pigment geared for what is it, 30pl nozzles. The BCI-6 nozzles I believe are 5pl in the mp780 (IIRc only the Cyan and Magenta have the smaller 2pl nozzles & 5pl). Also, it won't fit, it's about 60% larger.
Pigment ink costs more, so as a cost saving measure some companies will offer BCI-3EBk with dye ink, the same as the bci-6bk. This "works" but there is a marked quality difference.
You can (usually) disable the counters through some undocumented voodoo, but then it doesn't watch out for you running out of ink and you can burn up the expensive print head. This is not an issue in the mp780, or anything else in the ip4000 class. I have an mp760. The BCI-6/BCI-3e tanks are NOT chipped. Ink metering is aproximate until such time as you hit the bottom of the reservoir, then the prism is exposed and you are left with a quantity in the sponge which represents 20% of the tank max volume. http://www.steves-digicams.com/2004_reviews/canon_ip4000_pg2.html
Now if you were talking mp5xx, mp8xx, mp9xx, or ipx200/ipX300/ipX500 those are chipped. To disable the meters all you have to do is add ink to the tank, and wait, and press resume to continue printing after "empty", though the ip4500 could be different, I've not met it.
If you go bulk ink... I go with MIS inks from www.inksupply.com. The "kit" gives you empty cartridges and syringes. I've used them for a long time in the ip3000 and mp760. I have had a head failure in both printers, both replaced under warranty. Both were during periods of lack of use, though I have taken extra care since to make sure that when I manually refill I don't super saturate the sponge side... I make sure to blow in the vent so there is a nice air layer there. This failure was well after the 20th cartridge change, and the head and printer are only rated for about 10 tank changes. @ 90% savings, it's cheaper to buy heads after 3 cartridge changes than OEM ink. Really.
There is also http://www.hobbicolors.com/, they do e-bay and private sales. The prices can't be beat, though the bci-3e ink is dye based and doesn't look or last as long as pigment. There have been a couple people who complained about color matching, I believe those users got shipped cli-8 ink which the mp780 isn't calibrated for unless you tell the printer it's Japanese, then all the menus go Japanese and you need the Japanese driver. You can tell the printer it's Japaneses, reboot, and then tell it it's European or American, and it'll be calibrated with English menus and use the mp780 driver, but if you reset the printer, it's back to the Japanese menus. But I've only heard of misshipping once or twice from hobbicolors, and even if you buy your black in elsewhere, their price can't be beat.
Formulabs is another decent ink one can use. I've not used it my self, but others prefer it over Image specialists.
For cartridges, I've observed decent results form G&G and OM-100 tanks. In fact, I think they were from the same amazon advert as you posted. Now... I'm told in the UK canon complained about after market tanks shipped with Prisms violating their patent... but I'm not part of that market so I don't know. The savings isn't as great as bulk ink, which is well about 90%, but if you are lazy it's an option.
So to sum up
1) The mp780 has no chip 2) Don't use pigment in the dye black 3) You can do the reverse, but at the risk of quality 4) Bulk ink is an option and will work like new tanks. 5) Image Specialists and Formulabs are decent after market solutions for bulk ink 6) OM-100 / G&G cartridges I've used with positive results.
A few years ago my father figured out that he could buy a whole new printer with new ink cartridges for about 15$ more then just the ink cartridges ALONE. Of course they got wise to that and I am sure many people are familiar with new ink jets being sold with minimal ink installed. Epson and Canon still offer full sized tanks, though with epson priming the printer takes extra ink. In the case of Epson... you can hit their online store and buy a referb printer which often is competitive or cheaper than the ink it comes with.
For example, ink for the Epson R280 will run about $60 for the color, and about $18 for the black. A referb from the epson store will run you $70.00 , in the past they offered free shipping. On a side note I just noticed they offer high capacity tanks, so I must accept this info may be out of date. In the past they offered the r200 & r220 at about $10 less than the ink with full capacity tanks, there were no "high" capacity.
Canon, near as I'm aware doesn't offer low/high capacity tanks, though their budget models do offer tiny tanks with a higher cost per page. Unless something as changed a new ip4500 will run $90 shipped. Ink will run $72 in stores. Usually you won't find a better deal unless they offer a rebate. Given ink is $72 and a head is about the same (usually 66^ the value of the printer), a spare isn't reasonable.
It seems like it was either "Disco Fever" or "Time Warp". I must have played "Time Warp" as I doubt I could handle staring at Revolta for very long. While you have strong evidence... I don't think it was either of those two. The flippers were a light color, and if I recall correctly the machine had a childish theme... which is why I expect you got points for just hitting the flippers. I remember it as it was usually the only free table, and spending 1/2 hour or so just hitting the flippers got a few replays... well... until the manager of the hotel came by and reset the machine.
I played it about July 1980... Petersburg Virginia. At the Quality Inn-Steven Kent.
This is presuming that the machine came stock with banana flippers... which given how unpopular they were it may have been Disco Fever or Timewarp had theirs swapped out for some straight flippers, and the kiddy table got the used Banana flippers.
OTOH, my memory could be failing me and it could be Disco Fever. In addition to hitting the flippers giving you points, I remember the playfield being open. I also remember it made an ungodly amount of noise, so much so that just hitting the flippers got the hotel management annoyed, which makes one wonder why the hell they got the table in the first place.
Here's my take. I was never a big Metallica fan. Not that they didn't create decent works. Their "One" video (Footage from Johnny Got His Gun)is at least thought provoking. I've found if I can't agree with the artist's political views I'm not very likely to enjoy their work.
Metallica in the 80s encouraged fans to copy their material. It made sense since each tape was like an advert to buy the next album or see the show. But in the early days of Napster they took a very aggressive stance against them. They claimed it was different now since digital copies didn't fade with sharing, which at least is a somewhat valid argument. They also claimed to be for artist's rights... which technically should include using their business model from the 80s which was service oriented, product sells service... not to speak of artists no longer need to sell their soul to produce material and should have the freedom to adopt a new paradigm.
Metallica made a choice to defend big corporate music... and made it perfectly clear they no longer wished their material to be share. We obliged. And just like RC cola who once was dominate on the soda field, they faded to obscurity. You can see their material shared today, so all this kicking and screaming was pointless, and if you look at the number of downloads for their albums it's pathetically low. Youtube's view count is more respectable at 8 - 9 million per track putting it sub par to Rick Astley.
Will I download their material? No... they told me not to. Sure they changed their minds... but any artist who will encourage suing its fans for acts they formally supported isn't worthy of support. It's changed from disagreeing with their position to seeing this for what it really is, a bunch of turn coats devoid of all moral and ethical worth. They rejected this new medium and through action tried to deny others of their choice.
The most interesting game of pinball I played was on the Cape May-Lewes Ferry. The table was bolted clearly to the deck, and as you might imagine, since it was on water had it's tilt detector turned off. You could smack it and shake it, but given you were on a BOAT, it wasn't very predictable. But it was fun though. This would have been the very early 80s.
The most annoying pinball I played was something with curved flippers circa mid 1980. Oddly enough the flippers gave you points for just hitting them, so one could rack up a ton of replays even before you release the ball. The drawback was the flippers melted.
Slashdot Mirror
Hunt the Wumpus comes to mind.
This was the time period that VGA was getting off the ground. But if I recall correctly, there was no standard for 8bit 640*480. A lot of games were geared toward a specific graphics chipset. I have had NO experience running these games in the 21st century, but I imagine unless you have the hardware or hardware emulation you might be stuck with this games being playable only in 4bit color.
Now at least games for mainstream systems have emulators, and the hardware is pretty cut and dry. This would include Atari, Commodore, Amiga, Mac, Sega, Nintendo, and others. Someone with a stronger background in late 80s early 90s PC games might be able to say what chipsets were commonly used.
I imagine that many have nostalgia over this time period. I'm the first to say there are a ton of games which are classic that helped to shape the modern gaming universe. But to me PC games from this time period were just a royal pain in the butt as they needed the graphics card I didn't own, and the sound card I didn't own.
If I was sitting around in 1980 and wanted to buy games for their collector's value... I would go for the most popular one, or ones that showed innovation. At the time I would thought Space Invaders, Atlantis, Pitfall. Presently you can find most of these titles at a flee market.
The main problem I see is the fact that software is easy to copy. Presently you can download most of the 2600 games. I've seen huge collections of 8bit computer games.
It's not like a comic book at the time wasn't easy to copy. But honestly I never could grok the comic market either, or baseball cards.
I don't know the ins and outs of it, I think technically to get the Jesus Wafer after divorce, you have to get the marriage annulled. I also doubt that all priests pay attention since about 1/2 of all marriages end in divorce.
F*&!ING C*&T
For all I know they could be censoring Falling cilt(sp).
http://www.writetothem.com/
Contact your friendly neighborhood MP. From my limited understanding the hate speech laws are not intended to prevent people from being critical of a religion, not that Scientology is classified as a religion in the UK, or at least it's not a charitable organization.
I'm not a resident of the UK. However this info has been shared
YT video/a> of an officer explaining the new rule
Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 (c. 1)
I'm not in agreement, but this is the law being sited and enforced.
Religion = Large Popular cult.
Cult is a root in cultivate, where all religions were at one point cults. However in popular use cults tend to benefit a majority of people, where religious are institutions whose goal is to benefit society. I'm not saying that their methods always benefit society, but that's the ideal. Also cults tend to be secretive. For example, you ask a Christian their beliefs, they'll tell you they believe in a guy who walked on water, healed the sick, turned water into wine, and rose from the dead. You ask a cult their beliefs and practices and they won't answer you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSS178Q-4eo
You'll note that Tommy Davis never answered what Scientology beliefs in, only the "benefits". He also lied about OT3 involving Xenu.
Also they are not mutually exclusive. One can have a religion which is a cult.
IBM released the PC. Compaq cloned the bios, followed by everyone including your mother, mother's brother, neighbor, neighbor's dog. The rest of the PC was based on open specifications so poof, you have clones. Clones became the standard.
Ok, now the 21st century. EFI was an intel invention, currently managed by the Unified EFI forum. Is apple's implantation of EFI is unique? If not, it wouldn't be a clone would it?
1) The website doesn't have a good picture
2) The boxes are behind glass
I know I spent a fair amount of time hunting around CompUSA for one. They had them lumped in with the other cardbus ones. You can buy a card based on model number and get what you need, but without that information it's a crap shoot.
Also... Cardbus won't fit into MOST older laptops. I stress the most. I know this personally as I had a pentium 166 laptop that could physically accept a Cardbus card, but it wasn't. For the life of me I can't remember the model. But I bought a PCMCIA 4 port usb adapter. Useful device, if it wasn't cardbus. Fit just fine, but as it turns out the laptop didn't support cardbus.
It's still acronym hell
PCMCIA - what you "would" look for in a 16 bit wifi card, if this acronym was in use when WiFi hit the market (It might not have). But I've seen this advertised.
PC Card - What you need if you need a 16 bit card, if all that were labled as PC Card were 16 bit. Many are card bus.
CardBus - What you know for a fact won't work. If the box says this, you know it won't work.
Plus you have all these pesky people who don't know which is which, so they pick an acronym which may or may not be accurate.
PC Card -
...but the fact that there exist Wi-Fi cards for its 16-bit PCMCIA slot does score it extra points You know, this is true. There are non cardbus PC cards. They are a real pain to find. If they know what they are the price goes up, but you might get lucky and find a shop with the them next to the other regular WIFI cards. You might also get lucky and find someone on craigslist who is selling one.Why a pain? Acronym hell! PCMCIA/PCCard/CardBus. To be honest I don't know the difference between PCMCIA and PCCard (is there one?), but I sure know the difference between PCCard and Cardbus. But the problem is everything is advertised as PCCard, whether it's PCCard or Cardbus.
I think there was an option to mail order comics but... but dollar per page was rather high, and story per month was pretty low.
Regardless... I found the format to be a huge hassle.
"They sell kodak near here but I never saw them in the UK."
http://printers.kodak.com/
It's part of their EZ share line. The black is $10 with 400p @ 5% yield at least in the states. I'm not truly excited about the cost per page, but it is reasonable. The printer uses a technique similar to canon, detachable thermal head. It offers a multi color tank, as I recall three primaries and a clear, perhaps an additional black. Color and black are pigment. It's no Epson, but the price is a fair bit more reasonable even in contrast to their dye models.
Oh, near as I'm aware they only offer all in ones.
Sorry to hear about your Canon ip4300... in the states Canon has a VERY liberal warranty policy. They ship out replacement heads even after the warranty is expired. They accept warranty returns based on phone interviews.
While ml per yield is high, dollars to output is pretty reasonable for black. Not as reasonable as the ip4000 series (bci-3eBK). Kodak offers an inkjet which has an average cost per black @ 2.5c/page @ 5% yield. However, I highly doubt that would beat your dot matrix.
"Though is some places"
Here is a picture of the City of Though" I'm sure there are places named Through.
"apparently in Nevada it is not."
This would seem to be true, I can't find a place named Though in Nevada, nor one called Apparently.
"The cartridges last about 150 pages and absolutely saturate my paper. I tried different software to control it with but to no avail. As I mostly print code out I now print on an Epson LX300 24pin dot matrix. It cost me $30 from a dodgy repair shop down the road. The ribbons cost me $2.00 and print about 1100 sheets without fading."
That sounds very odd... not that I don't believe you... the Canons are rather high volume per yield printers. As in 25ml per 500pages @ 5% yield. That's in par with HP 10 years ago. While that is a fact.. I can't say I've noticed truly saturated paper just printing text. I would guess you are using some type of onion skin paper, like old school dot matrix, not your average 20lb paper.
I'd like to say with bulk ink the price is on par with ribbons. The price you seem to be paying is slightly less if one were to buy 4oz of bulk ink for $10.00.
I got into a 24 pin when the feature set was decent. I think it was a panasonic 2124 IIRC. It had a color ribbon, dual feeds, and plain or tractor feed. But the contrast was never on par with inkjet or laser... but running black ribbons it was pretty cheap to operate... but once you factored in the cost of a laser's replacement parts, I have to admit the dot matrix was indeed cheaper.
Then you have the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act which would suggest it's our product and we have a right to shove anything we want into it.
3) Yeah... This printer and my cold dead hands. I can even print on CDs with it (I live in Japan). Yes, the ink in japan is about 1/2 the cost it is here, according to amazon.co.jp. I'd consider going OEM ink if I could refill my tanks for $30ish. As it stands it's closer to $70ish.
CD printing is an option for American canons. details are on this site
http://pixma.ulmb.com/ I'm not sure on the ip4500, no one as posted any info on that, but most models are supported, all you need is the tray.
You can easily make an extra buck in japan selling trays. They are not too spendy and ebay will give you 100% profit, and happy americans.
Pigment ink costs more, so as a cost saving measure some companies will offer BCI-3EBk with dye ink, the same as the bci-6bk. This "works" but there is a marked quality difference. You can (usually) disable the counters through some undocumented voodoo, but then it doesn't watch out for you running out of ink and you can burn up the expensive print head. This is not an issue in the mp780, or anything else in the ip4000 class. I have an mp760. The BCI-6/BCI-3e tanks are NOT chipped. Ink metering is aproximate until such time as you hit the bottom of the reservoir, then the prism is exposed and you are left with a quantity in the sponge which represents 20% of the tank max volume.
http://www.steves-digicams.com/2004_reviews/canon_ip4000_pg2.html
Now if you were talking mp5xx, mp8xx, mp9xx, or ipx200/ipX300/ipX500 those are chipped. To disable the meters all you have to do is add ink to the tank, and wait, and press resume to continue printing after "empty", though the ip4500 could be different, I've not met it.
If you go bulk ink... I go with MIS inks from www.inksupply.com. The "kit" gives you empty cartridges and syringes. I've used them for a long time in the ip3000 and mp760. I have had a head failure in both printers, both replaced under warranty. Both were during periods of lack of use, though I have taken extra care since to make sure that when I manually refill I don't super saturate the sponge side... I make sure to blow in the vent so there is a nice air layer there. This failure was well after the 20th cartridge change, and the head and printer are only rated for about 10 tank changes. @ 90% savings, it's cheaper to buy heads after 3 cartridge changes than OEM ink. Really.
There is also http://www.hobbicolors.com/, they do e-bay and private sales. The prices can't be beat, though the bci-3e ink is dye based and doesn't look or last as long as pigment. There have been a couple people who complained about color matching, I believe those users got shipped cli-8 ink which the mp780 isn't calibrated for unless you tell the printer it's Japanese, then all the menus go Japanese and you need the Japanese driver. You can tell the printer it's Japaneses, reboot, and then tell it it's European or American, and it'll be calibrated with English menus and use the mp780 driver, but if you reset the printer, it's back to the Japanese menus. But I've only heard of misshipping once or twice from hobbicolors, and even if you buy your black in elsewhere, their price can't be beat.
Formulabs is another decent ink one can use. I've not used it my self, but others prefer it over Image specialists.
For cartridges, I've observed decent results form G&G and OM-100 tanks. In fact, I think they were from the same amazon advert as you posted. Now... I'm told in the UK canon complained about after market tanks shipped with Prisms violating their patent... but I'm not part of that market so I don't know. The savings isn't as great as bulk ink, which is well about 90%, but if you are lazy it's an option.
So to sum up
1) The mp780 has no chip
2) Don't use pigment in the dye black
3) You can do the reverse, but at the risk of quality
4) Bulk ink is an option and will work like new tanks.
5) Image Specialists and Formulabs are decent after market solutions for bulk ink
6) OM-100 / G&G cartridges I've used with positive results.
For example, ink for the Epson R280 will run about $60 for the color, and about $18 for the black. A referb from the epson store will run you $70.00 , in the past they offered free shipping. On a side note I just noticed they offer high capacity tanks, so I must accept this info may be out of date. In the past they offered the r200 & r220 at about $10 less than the ink with full capacity tanks, there were no "high" capacity.
Canon, near as I'm aware doesn't offer low/high capacity tanks, though their budget models do offer tiny tanks with a higher cost per page. Unless something as changed a new ip4500 will run $90 shipped. Ink will run $72 in stores. Usually you won't find a better deal unless they offer a rebate. Given ink is $72 and a head is about the same (usually 66^ the value of the printer), a spare isn't reasonable.
I played it about July 1980... Petersburg Virginia. At the Quality Inn-Steven Kent.
This is presuming that the machine came stock with banana flippers... which given how unpopular they were it may have been Disco Fever or Timewarp had theirs swapped out for some straight flippers, and the kiddy table got the used Banana flippers.
OTOH, my memory could be failing me and it could be Disco Fever. In addition to hitting the flippers giving you points, I remember the playfield being open. I also remember it made an ungodly amount of noise, so much so that just hitting the flippers got the hotel management annoyed, which makes one wonder why the hell they got the table in the first place.
Here's my take. I was never a big Metallica fan. Not that they didn't create decent works. Their "One" video (Footage from Johnny Got His Gun)is at least thought provoking. I've found if I can't agree with the artist's political views I'm not very likely to enjoy their work.
Metallica in the 80s encouraged fans to copy their material. It made sense since each tape was like an advert to buy the next album or see the show. But in the early days of Napster they took a very aggressive stance against them. They claimed it was different now since digital copies didn't fade with sharing, which at least is a somewhat valid argument. They also claimed to be for artist's rights... which technically should include using their business model from the 80s which was service oriented, product sells service... not to speak of artists no longer need to sell their soul to produce material and should have the freedom to adopt a new paradigm.
Metallica made a choice to defend big corporate music... and made it perfectly clear they no longer wished their material to be share. We obliged. And just like RC cola who once was dominate on the soda field, they faded to obscurity. You can see their material shared today, so all this kicking and screaming was pointless, and if you look at the number of downloads for their albums it's pathetically low. Youtube's view count is more respectable at 8 - 9 million per track putting it sub par to Rick Astley.
Will I download their material? No... they told me not to. Sure they changed their minds... but any artist who will encourage suing its fans for acts they formally supported isn't worthy of support. It's changed from disagreeing with their position to seeing this for what it really is, a bunch of turn coats devoid of all moral and ethical worth. They rejected this new medium and through action tried to deny others of their choice.
Fuck'em.
The most interesting game of pinball I played was on the Cape May-Lewes Ferry. The table was bolted clearly to the deck, and as you might imagine, since it was on water had it's tilt detector turned off. You could smack it and shake it, but given you were on a BOAT, it wasn't very predictable. But it was fun though. This would have been the very early 80s.
The most annoying pinball I played was something with curved flippers circa mid 1980. Oddly enough the flippers gave you points for just hitting them, so one could rack up a ton of replays even before you release the ball. The drawback was the flippers melted.