Well,
Colorspan Displaymaker Ink Solutions are a never ending story!
As Rich said Fred Flintstone used one of these BUT, worldwide are a FEW that are still in very good working conditions like mine... Refusing to give up...
The problem is not the inks nor the printer itself... Cause that printer use Printheads that ARE NOT MADE BY HP, and of course the inks ARE NOT MADE ONLY by HP. So, you can use ANY third party ink compatible with the printhead... BUT, the "owners" of the technology are they, and they created the profiler chips as an insurance to make you stay always linked to those Solachrome Inks.
So, all the problem are the freaking damned profilers.
HP discontinnued the printer and the inks, and with them the profilers...
In the last year I did made a HUGE investigation over the internet, and I think this is the only forum active worldwide where a few Colorspan users are still connected and sharing information. Following the advices made by the members of this forum I called CMS California and they dont have anything for Colorspan printers left in stock. I contacted North Light Color and they was the only Colorspan Inks/Parts provider left in the U.S. with 2012 products remains and they told me that they only had 3 bulks of yellow ink left in stock. Only those 3 boxes...
There is 2 ways to brake the printer system... Cheat the profiler itself or cheat the verification!
The verification is possible to skip using a second OHS Board, is a little bit complicated and need some Colorspan parts (I am studying this method now)
Or cracking the profiler itself... The only person who I know that can do so is Mr. Wunder... BUT... Mr. Wunder is in the other side of the planet.
If you check his bios and see the pics posted by Mr Wunder you will see that they mastered the system and they REALLY got them working well. In fact, they could crack the profiler chip to make them virtually infinite.
He represents a company called Blue Mall, who developed the inks, profilers and bulk system for Colorspan Printers in Belgium.
The only problem is that is virtually imposible (In my case living in Venezuela) to make business with them cause the constantly shipping costs for the big boxes of inks will be astronomical, making for me A LOT cheaper to send my printer to the Junkyard and buy a new one.
I doubt that in the U.S are many Colorspan printers still in use, or at least a significant amount of printers to make possible (or profitable) to run a franchise of Blue Mall in this side of the world. Maybe if a big number of Colorspan users came up will be a lot easier to make business with them...
Finally, I can recommend you to contact Mr. Wunder, they will send you the info of their products.
Best Regards!
Chris Pineda.-