quoting:
Was given two broken Epson stylus 500 inkjet printers. Both had been
sitting unused for over a year in the basement of a friend. One had a
note indicating it would not feed. This unit did not have either the
Black or the Color cartridge installed. Second unit had the cartridges
in place, but note indicated it would not print Black.
Decided to take a look at the paper feed problem first and found a pencil
had fallen into and jammed the paper feed mechanism. Removed the pencil
and paper feeder appears to be working properly. I immediately moved the
cartridges from the other unit to this one and was disappointed to see
that I had problems printing Black, and Red (Yellow and Blue appear to be
working although somewhat streaky). I subsequently read a small note on
the inside printer cover that if a cartridge gets removed prematurely, it
cannot be reinstalled ... Oh well, wish I had seen this first as I would
have worked on the other unit.

Decided to use a cartridge refill kit to refill these, but did not see
any different result. Does anyone have any experience with this model of
Epson printer? I am guessing that by having it sit idle for so many
months that the printer's ink distribution tubes or heads got clogged.
Any advice to try to get these working again? I am reluctant to spend
$50 on new
cartridges before I can demonstrate that this investment would make the
unit operable again.


Yes, they are clogged due to sitting unused for a long time. To fix:
Take one each back and color empty cartridges. Fill them with alcohol.
Place them in the printer and run the cleaning cycle many times. See if
there's any improvement. If there is, run the cleaning cycle some more.
Keep running the cleaning cycle until the heads are cleared. If it stops
improving, try leaving the alcohol filled cartriges in overnight, but the
printer need not to be running.


For the people bashing Epson: I have two of their inkjet printers. As long
as I don't do something stupid, they don't clog. Leaving it without any ink
carts is a sure way to clog it. Just leaving it unused for a log time will
clog it. Buddies of mine have Canons, HP, and Lexmarks and they all have had
their fair share of clogging due to extended periods of non use. And for my
Epsons, I do not refill the carts, but I do buy "compatibles" from a
respectable seller. I have found this particular brand of carts to be
reliable.