Falcon II Outdoor - Tiara Opal 2 - Ink Chip Help

Greetings,
First off I want to give a general shout-out to all the people who actively post. I have had so much help just from reading past posts. What a great community of people helping each other. I hope I can find a nugget or two of help for myself and my new interesting project printer.

I recently came into possession of a (free) dilapidated Tiara Opal 2 [re-branded Falcon II Outdoor]. I wouldn't have touched it with a 10 foot pole if it didn't look convincingly possible that the heads were flushed out and cleaned before it was parked for who knows how long. It appears that all electronics,switches, heaters, and boards (other than ink chip readers) are in working order and have the mutoh rh3.01 firmware installed.

I have bulk ink, solvent, and cartridges but the Ink ID chip system is holding me back. Some of the card readers in the cartridge bay slots have broken/bent pins. The chips that I have are questionable as I can try them in the slots that do read and they don't show up in the ink status displays.

It would be nice to bypass all this to see if my heads even work, then I can come back later to ink chips and OEM ink.

Here are my questions:
[1] Is there any way to work around the ink chip system in this hardware/firmware? (other than a costly service code or file update file from a service company)

[2] It appears that the firmware 2.08 or 2.11 or 2.17 would allow what is called an "Ink ID Mask" that just assigns a color to a cartridge location and as long as there is a cartridge there it would assume it was the right color. Operator better be careful because it is gonna suck up whatever ink is present. Can anyone confirm that? Where can I find a copy of the older firmware?

 

Sadly I received no reply. I had some fun trying to hack into the firmware. After some further teardown the heads are fully clogged.

I will be stripping the chassis down to harvest components so if anyone want to make me an offer on specific components, I'm all ears. The main board is in great shape as far as I can tell.