The USB appears as a serial port.  If you auto search for the TIU, it'll find it, and it'll be on a serial port.  On my laptop, that's COM3 right now.

It's possible that your Windows needs to have teh USB drivers installed. They are available form MTH at the following link:

 

http://extranet.mth-railking.c...n/CDM20802_Setup.exe

Barry, he did say he has the drivers for the USB, are you thinking they're not compatible?

John,

he did say he has the drivers for the USB, are you thinking they're not compatible?

They may not be new enough for the TIU's hardware.

Windows 7 does detect my connection with usb cable.  I applied power through fixed voltage and sound cables jumped as per book/  The program is having a hard time finding tiu, check connections and cycle power.  I do not have an rs232 cable connected

Note that the USB connection will appear as a serial connection when you connect the TIU.  It's under the serial devices.  When I first connected it, it worked fine on this computer and my laptop using the generic Windows drivers.  Both are Windows 7 64-bit.  Here's what I see in Device Manager when I connect the TIU.  All I have connected to the TIU is the USB cable and the aux power supply.

 

 

 I applied power through fixed voltage and sound cables jumped as per book

The jumper cable needs to be inserted before powering-on the TIU. Then, when the TIU is powered on, the red LED should not blink. It should just come on steady.

 

If it blinks, the cable may e mono rather than stereo, may not be plugged in completely or may be defective. Any of these would cause the Loader Program to fail to find the TIU.

Barry,

  When you refer to a jumper cable, are you talking about a USB cable? I never realized these come in stereo or mono.

Dave, No, the jumper is the cable that must be plugged in to jumper the ProtoCast and ProtoDispatch ports before powering the TIU to perform the upgrade.

I may be doing it wrong.  I plugged the usb cable from the tiu to my pc.  I plugged the 1/8 stereo cable from the mic to the protocast connection.  I had my transformer supplying minimal power with the only the power light on, but no detection.  I have not checked to see if there is an update past revision L for the TIU.  Do I also attach all of this to my track when transferring new protosound updates?  I do work with computers, and I want to get it going.  I really appreciate everyone's guidance in this new endeavor.  I will be trying out my Lionel trains with the tmcc command base and working on getting my protosound trains to work after I get this to work.

You must plug in all cables before powering the TIU. You don't need to connect the TIU to the tracks.

Here is a cable that will work for the TIU update, and it's nice and short.

 

1 Feet 3.5 mm Stereo Male to Male Cable

 

Any length will work, I just keep all the cables for any upgrade in a box with the aux power supply so I have them when needed.

Thanks Barry and John,

    Sorry but I'm not a big fan of metric. Is 3.5mm the same as 1/8"?

Yes, the 3.5mm stereo plug is a 1/8" plug.  I guess that's a bow to the metric folks.

 

From the product description, they make that clear.

 

Industry standard 3.5 mm (1/8") patch cable

 

The price was right with free shipping.