Can older upgradeable PS1 engines be downgraded to conventional?

To use the engine without a circuit board is possible. But first you must know if it has a DC can motor or not. If it has a DC can motor you will need to use a bridge rectifier in place of the circuit board, a bridge rectifier is not that expensive less then $10.00(just a ball park figure)at most electronic stores. Hook the motor leads to the bridge rectifier and the other side to the track power.

I did this to two Williams engines I have, so I know it works safely.

Lee Fritz

PS-1 is conventional. As long as you keep a good battery in the loco you wont have any problems. You are just way overthinking this. PS-1 is a great system with command like operations in a conventional package and great sounds to boot. As long as you dont try to run the engine with a dead battery you dont have to worry about chips getting locked up and if they do there is a $30 kit available that will unlock them in a few simple steps

"PS&PS1" is actually conventional!  These operate by "transformer" (power supply) control no remotes involved.

Ron

You can also substitute a Lionel, Williams, K-Line, QSI, or any other electronic reverse unit as well a a Lionel mechanical E-unit in conjunction with a full wave bridge rectifier to run in conventional.

To answer your question, a MTH ProtoSound setup uses a different bottom board than QSI's DCRU.  There is no logic on it.  IF you remove the top board it would NOT operate like a reverse unit.  You can wire the bottom board to a switch, but than you only have one direction ops.  Forward only; move switch and reverse only. 

You could easily swap in a DCRU or any other Reverse unit as mentioned.

I am with Matt thought.  Good battery or use a BCR and don't worry about it.  G

PS-1 locomotives are the best conventional locomotives out there, IMHO.  You get a nice full set of sounds, and even some basic command like programmable options.  Order a new battery from MTH, or get a BCR, and you'll be fine.

The problem is not with PS-1. The problem is with the Nicad bettery. If you change the Nicad battery with a Nimh (Nickel Metal Hydride )  the chip will not scramble and you will not have issues. Very simple couple bucks for a Nimh battery and about 10 minutes of labor, no issue

@ bn614 ..  thats interesting.  didnt know that.  could you expound on the reasoning that nimh would make  a difference?

The NiMh is the current choice for MTH.  A new NiCad would work, but the NiMh 9v (7-cell 8.4V) batteries are a lot more common and easier to find.  I wouldn't bother doing anything until you have a problem, many people are still running PS/1 stuff.

Could the PS1 also be converted to an old Lionel e-unit if the bridge rectifier was used?

The problem is with the Nicad bettery. If you change the Nicad battery with a Nimh (Nickel Metal Hydride )  the chip will not scramble and you will not have issues.

I question the correctness of that statement.  If a chip can get scrambled by a dead battery, what difference would it make what kind of battery was dead?????

aussteve posted:

Could the PS1 also be converted to an old Lionel e-unit if the bridge rectifier was used?

Yep,  The mechanical E unit is sort of a DPDT toggle , I've heard of it being done but  .. I wouldn't know how to wire it,  Some one on here will though.

Ok, the chip does not get scrambled by a dead battery, it gets scrambled by trying to run the loco with a dead battery. The BCR is the perfect solution to this problem as they do not have so short of a shelf life

There are, or have been, electronic devices far more reliable than the ancient mechanical buzzing e-units.  Over the decades, I've replaced several old me-units and never had a problem thereafter.  QSI used to make a device called an ACRU which worked with Lionel motors.

RJR posted:

The problem is with the Nicad bettery. If you change the Nicad battery with a Nimh (Nickel Metal Hydride )  the chip will not scramble and you will not have issues.

I question the correctness of that statement.  If a chip can get scrambled by a dead battery, what difference would it make what kind of battery was dead?????

 

As Matt said above it isn't that one battery is doing the scrambling and one is not.  It has to do with the fact that any dead battery with do the scrambling.  NiCad are really poor batteries by todays standards because the discharge to a 0% charge just sitting on the shelf in a matter of days, they have since been replaced with NiMH that held a bigger charge for a few weeks, and in the last several years by low self-discharge NiMH batteries that will hold a working charge for over a year on the shelf.  NiMH also don't have a memory like NiCad.  With NiCad batteries will hold smaller and smaller charges if they are not fully drained on each cycle.  NiMH has no memory, thus is perfect for devices where the battery will not be fully drained before being charged, such as a train engine that almost never draws power from the battery.  

Edit, because it appears I didn't say the one thing that I actually wanted to:  As to why the NiMH are less like to cause problems they also take a much longer time to reach a 0% charge state.  even those that are not low self-discharge they will hold a nominal charge for months, enough that the boards won't be harmed even with a "dead" NiMH battery.  

JGL

I always heard the problem with SOME Ps1 was a low charged battery in the neighborhood of 5 volts that caused the scrambling as the board starts to update but cannot finish the job. This doesn't happen with a completely dead battery as the engine shuts off immediately.

Not all PS1 engines are prone to scrambling.

I have a RailKing NW-2 that came with PS-1. One day it wouldn't move, probably bad battery, but I didn't want to deal with trying to get working again. I removed everything and installed a Williams reverse board, Williams Tru-blast board and swapped the electro-couplers out with MTH manual couplers and everything works great now. The only thing I noticed is that the horn and bell sounds play a little slower, probably due to the impedance difference between the Williams and MTH speakers. The Williams speaker would not fit and I had to use the MTH speaker that came installed with the unit from the factory.

Garfield,

    Just put a BCR in the P1 Engine and run it as the conventional it really is.  No need to do anything more.

PCRR/Dave

JohnGaltLine posted:

RJR posted:

The problem is with the Nicad bettery. If you change the Nicad battery with a Nimh (Nickel Metal Hydride )  the chip will not scramble and you will not have issues.

I question the correctness of that statement.  If a chip can get scrambled by a dead battery, what difference would it make what kind of battery was dead?????

 

As Matt said above it isn't that one battery is doing the scrambling and one is not.  It has to do with the fact that any dead battery with do the scrambling.  NiCad are really poor batteries by todays standards because the discharge to a 0% charge just sitting on the shelf in a matter of days, they have since been replaced with NiMH that held a bigger charge for a few weeks, and in the last several years by low self-discharge NiMH batteries that will hold a working charge for over a year on the shelf.  NiMH also don't have a memory like NiCad.  With NiCad batteries will hold smaller and smaller charges if they are not fully drained on each cycle.  NiMH has no memory, thus is perfect for devices where the battery will not be fully drained before being charged, such as a train engine that almost never draws power from the battery.  

Edit, because it appears I didn't say the one thing that I actually wanted to:  As to why the NiMH are less like to cause problems they also take a much longer time to reach a 0% charge state.  even those that are not low self-discharge they will hold a nominal charge for months, enough that the boards won't be harmed even with a "dead" NiMH battery.  

JGL

This statement about discharge rate is not correct.  Rechargeable do not discharge in a matter of days.  The memory effect while true is overly hyped on the internet based on memory effect issues with space satellites in a totally different operating environment.  Do a search and I have explained what the PS-1board expects from a battery.  The current drain is low.  Your not running the train on the battery, your just running sounds and transferring memory on a microchip for 7-15seconds. 

The reason Ni-Cad is harder to find in the consumer 9V package is Cadmium.  Poison to the environment.  When you through them in your trash.

I have seen original NiCad batteries in 10 year old trains still work after sitting for years.  Rare yes.

The key is to have a good and charged battery or a BCR, especially PS-1 made before 1997, unless it is the early 94/95 stuff that had a battery switch.  Those ran even with out a battery on.  Battery was purely for sound continuity.  G

GGG posted:

JohnGaltLine posted:

RJR posted:

The problem is with the Nicad bettery. If you change the Nicad battery with a Nimh (Nickel Metal Hydride )  the chip will not scramble and you will not have issues.

I question the correctness of that statement.  If a chip can get scrambled by a dead battery, what difference would it make what kind of battery was dead?????

 

As Matt said above it isn't that one battery is doing the scrambling and one is not.  It has to do with the fact that any dead battery with do the scrambling.  NiCad are really poor batteries by todays standards because the discharge to a 0% charge just sitting on the shelf in a matter of days, they have since been replaced with NiMH that held a bigger charge for a few weeks, and in the last several years by low self-discharge NiMH batteries that will hold a working charge for over a year on the shelf.  NiMH also don't have a memory like NiCad.  With NiCad batteries will hold smaller and smaller charges if they are not fully drained on each cycle.  NiMH has no memory, thus is perfect for devices where the battery will not be fully drained before being charged, such as a train engine that almost never draws power from the battery.  

Edit, because it appears I didn't say the one thing that I actually wanted to:  As to why the NiMH are less like to cause problems they also take a much longer time to reach a 0% charge state.  even those that are not low self-discharge they will hold a nominal charge for months, enough that the boards won't be harmed even with a "dead" NiMH battery.  

JGL

This statement about discharge rate is not correct.  Rechargeable do not discharge in a matter of days.  The memory effect while true is overly hyped on the internet based on memory effect issues with space satellites in a totally different operating environment.  Do a search and I have explained what the PS-1board expects from a battery.  The current drain is low.  Your not running the train on the battery, your just running sounds and transferring memory on a microchip for 7-15seconds. 

The reason Ni-Cad is harder to find in the consumer 9V package is Cadmium.  Poison to the environment.  When you through them in your trash.

I have seen original NiCad batteries in 10 year old trains still work after sitting for years.  Rare yes.

The key is to have a good and charged battery or a BCR, especially PS-1 made before 1997, unless it is the early 94/95 stuff that had a battery switch.  Those ran even with out a battery on.  Battery was purely for sound continuity.  G

Homework done,  

I got some of it right, some of it wrong, and the basic effect is the same.  

A poorly maintained or damaged NiCad will discharge in this time frame or less.  this occurs because small dendrites, or pieces of material formed from crystalized cadmium form, connecting the plates of the cell and act as a resistor to short out the cell.  A NiCad battery in perfect condition will lose it's charge at a rate of about 10% over the first 24 hours, then about 1% per day.  The thing with NiCAD is that they can not be measured on how much charge they contain.  They will read 1.2 volts all the way up until the point they are fully discharged and begin to read about 1.0 volts.  Discharging a NiCad Battery past the 1.0 volt level will damage the battery as well, and this is likely the primary reason for failure in train engines.  They sit on a shelf long enough that the battery actually starts to damage it's self. After discharging below 1 volt cadmium crystals form as they would from charging too quickly, and dendrites fuse the plates, effectively trashing the cell to the point that it will no longer hold a charge for any sustained period of time.  Sure, if in an engine that sees regular use a NiCad battery will last quite some time, though 10 years seems to be pushing it as they are only rated for 500 charge cycles, but in engines that sit on the self for months at a time, you're going to see batteries that are dead only a day or two after charging.  

I expect you to be correct that the current drain is almost nothing on these batteries, and that is part of the problem.  even in normal use the batteries are never properly charged, which leads to further formation of cadmium crystals in the cell.  The problem that will occur is that when a cell is heavily crystallized it will seem charged, but has so little energy stored that even that tiny current draw will drain it in an instant, causing the scrambling problem, sort of like unplugging a computer as it is booting up.  

Nicad memory is not specific to environment, except that it happens more readily the warmer the battery is.  The biggest effect is the current applied to charge.  Low current causes less damage than high current.  Ex, Protosound engines with no current limiting in the charge circuit are probably more harmful then removing the battery and charging in a proper slow, low current, charger.  

And lastly, I expect that if better batteries were not developed we would all still be using NiCad.  Yes cadmium is bad for the environment, but if NiCad batteries were still the best battery in all other measures, they would still be the standard.  It just so happens that batteries that are more environmentally friendly are also better at holding a charge and more forgiving on how they are charged. 

I'm not debating that a NiCad battery could last a long time, and they are perfectly suited to many tasks, but NiMh is a much better, easier to use battery for folks that don't want to deal with NiCad's issues.  

JGL

John, Like all those new Freon are better than R-12?  MTH still uses NiCad 2.4V, they get about 7 plus years of use.  The ones in your cordless phone can last 12 years.  More stored energy than the 8.4V.  Sure a damaged battery won't work or hold a charge, but those discharge rates rarely seem to matter when the required drain is in the 100ma range or less for 10secs.

I work on a lot of trains that have been sitting for 12-16 weeks.  120 days and those batteries (2.4V or 8.4) still work when testing the train.  My own PS-1 may sit for 6 months before I use them, still function fine after all that time.  Why if the discharge is 1 percent a day after a 10 % loss on the first day?

Now try to draw full voltage at rated current and they won't last long.  BUT our trains don't do that.  So you still have to apply what you read to the circumstances that are applicable in use.  G

I would put a BCR in it.