Digital BW, The Print

I've been happily using a C84 fed with MIS EZ inks through a CIS for 
about 2 years now.  I have just received the "parts are nearing the end 
of their service life" message and the printer refuses to go further.  
I've made a LOT of prints and can't really complain if it is really 
dead, but I'm wondering two things:

1.  Is there a way to reset the suicide counter and let the little beast 
soldier on until the output really does start to fall in quality?

2.  Barring that, is there a current Epson model that takes the same 
cartridges, so that I might not have to replace the whole CIS unit 
(which cost a LOT more than the printer itself)? 

I do have a second C84 which I bought at the same time as the one which 
failed, but have used it as a backup color printer only.  I don't do a 
lot of color printing on it, and I think I may be on the second set of 
cartridges.  I can certainly switch the CIS to that machine and keep 
going for now, but I do a very large run of prints at Christmas time 
with a hard deadline (12/25), and want to have a spare printer on hand 
that can pick up the load immediately if the primary one fails on a 
Saturday night (for example.)  So a new printer would either become the 
primary (if it were faster, for example) or the backup, but in either 
case I'd want it to use the same CIS setup.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.
Kip