I've got an old Epson Stylus that uses unchipped cartridges and I never print colour. Despite this, the colour ink cartridge still gets used as I suspect the m/c uses colour to supplement the black when this runs on empty. So what did I do? I got a very cheap black refill kit from Tesco, drilled both the 3 colour (combined) and black cartridges as per the instruction leaflet, refilled them both with black ink with the hyperdeemic noodle as supplied, put the rubber plugs in the fill holes ready for next time, and away it went!