[cssndrx]

I can confirm that Brother printers stop working even though the toner still prints perfect pages. I couldn't believe that a company would program a functional product to suicide, so I did some searching on the subject. There used to be a hack that was possible to get Brother printers to continue printing by covering an "eye" on the printer (http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/forums/laser/39806). However, the new Brothers (like my HL2270DW) no longer have this exploit available.

I feel that a company that would deliberately program its toner to stop functioning, is questionable on moral grounds. It is purposeful destruction of value. It hurts the environment and is wasteful.

[icarus_drowning]

I was able to get this to work on an HL2140 last year. I just taped a small piece of construction paper over the eye on the cartridge and it happily went about printing for quite some time- I made it through an entire ream before the quality degraded. Since then, I always cover the eye on new cartridges before I insert them and use the quality of the prints, not the printer itself, to let me know when to buy more toner.

[cssndrx]

Ah yes, you're right. The hole was supposed to be on the toner, but the hole no longer existed on the toner required by my printer (judging by toner/hack pictures I found online and threads discussing the hack for my make). Glad it worked out for you. Don't replace your printer!