Epson printer - not working (Castle Ward Lancaster)

Someone techy might be able to get it working. It's an Epson XP-247 3-in-1 printer scanner copier which was given to me second hand about five years ago. There was no installation CD but I was able to download the necessary drivers from the internet. Recently it began to leave blank lines when printing draft quality which was not resolved by cleaning the heads. High quality printing was fine. But then the black ink ran out and after I changed it the printer only printed the colours, not the black. I thought the new cartridge must be faulty so I tried another one. This time it wouldn't even acknowledge that the new cartridge was even there. I have been using the same brand of non-Epson cartridges for 5 years but maybe Epson have tightened up on people using non-branded over. So I've decided it's time to get a new printer. I'm hoping that someone might be able to make use of this one even if it's only for 'spares and repairs'