another printer

I found a printer offer post on freecycle and replied. I guess I was one of only two respondents who gave a phone number as the instructions asked. The other phone number giver didn't show up this morning, so it went to me. This is an Epson Stylus Photo R220, which only costs about $50 new, but the ink's about $70. When the ink's low, it doesn't let you print. So we got it hooked up--it's missing a power cable, so Erik took the laptop's power cable just for a bit. But the ink light's on. We tried taking out the color ink cartridges to see if it would sense the black ink only and sense that the black ink level was fine, but this didn't work. So I want to try buying a black ink cartridge. Erik's still sick and doesn't want to go anywhere. He says when he's finished reading the intro to the Icelandic saga he's into right now, he'll try fixing the old one.