Fixing the MTH 2 rail Allegheny

Check your E-mail Joe.

Thanks... Boss!

Wow, That was a new one. I finally got the soundfile loaded. I was doing other things. I was upstairs and for a split second I wondered who was running trains?

It seems that when the engine had finished, it sprang to life and took off running. I had considered that, so I connected the cars to it before going upstairs!

Don't walk away!!!!

yes anytime you download a sound file when it completes the engine automatically starts up, does not always run like yours did. glad you got it to work!

Alan

I know it starts up usually. I prepared luckily, for the event, it happened to do. I pulled everything off the mains and loaded the soundfile on it. Our grandson likes long trains so there's always a lot of cars and engines on the rails. I've always feared a runaway, so I connected the cars and thought I could hear when it finished.

As I was typing upstairs, I blanked out and thought, who's running trains?

It was a long run down, and had to gently pull the Z4000 handle down to zero.

Sometimes I go downstairs or into a room and ask myself, now what was I going to do??

I'm fading..............

The most recent version of the loader works pretty fast on Proto-2 engines.

only took 8 minutes to load (or less?)

only took that long for me to forget I was loading a soundfile!

& more issues that I'll have to tear into again....

@Engineer-Joe posted:

only took 8 minutes to load (or less?)

only took that long for me to forget I was loading a soundfile!

Well Joe, by my calculations it should have taken about 15 minutes. The TIU communicates at 9600 Baud over the serial connection to a PC. (assuming a perfect connection to the engine) This translates to about 1KB per second to upload or download a file.  The file you uploaded was 901KB and that would be about 14 to 15 minutes.

A file upload to an engine takes much less time because the file only replaces the selected memory locations as specified in the file. The older 5v PS2 files are usually 1MB (1024KB) or less in size.  Now download a 4MB file from a PS3 engine, the Loader will download each memory location of the 4MB file regardless if it has data or not. You guessed it, it takes just shy of an hour.

A while back I ran a bunch of test on this, Never could I get any speed faster than 9600 Baud. I tried all sorts of trick like using DC power and using 25 foot power leads between the track and the TIU, I didn't see any noticeable difference. One thing I gleaned from the process was that older TIU's before the Rev. L did very poorly when uploading a file to a newer PS3 engine and sometime failed completely during the process.

@Engineer-Joe posted:

Sometimes I go downstairs or into a room and ask myself, now what was I going to do??

I'm fading..............

Whew!!!! And here I thought I was the only one who had that problem!! Nice to know I have company!!! LOl!!!

@H1000 posted:

Well Joe, by my calculations it should have taken about 15 minutes. The TIU communicates at 9600 Baud over the serial connection to a PC. (assuming a perfect connection to the engine) This translates to about 1KB per second to upload or download a file.  The file you uploaded was 901KB and that would be about 14 to 15 minutes.

A file upload to an engine takes much less time because the file only replaces the selected memory locations as specified in the file. The older 5v PS2 files are usually 1MB (1024KB) or less in size.  Now download a 4MB file from a PS3 engine, the Loader will download each memory location of the 4MB file regardless if it has data or not. You guessed it, it takes just shy of an hour.

A while back I ran a bunch of test on this, Never could I get any speed faster than 9600 Baud. I tried all sorts of trick like using DC power and using 25 foot power leads between the track and the TIU, I didn't see any noticeable difference. One thing I gleaned from the process was that older TIU's before the Rev. L did very poorly when uploading a file to a newer PS3 engine and sometime failed completely during the process.

I first loaded the original Allegheny PS2 file into it from 2003? maybe.

So when I loaded the next PS2 file, I thought I saw something like 8 minutes on the screen. I may have been mistaken. I can't remember if I was even loading the file after all.

It could have easily been 15 minutes overall as I left.

Could it have gone faster because the two files had some similarity?

Newest loader, version "L" tiu, Z4000 for track power with aux power into TIU.

So although I kept testing everything with my meter and it checked out, I tore into this engine again. I ran new wires to the smoke unit to be sure they weren't an issue. I carefully repacked the smoke unit and cleaned it.

I did notice something that may have been an issue. I didn't get continuity with my meter, but I believe it was happening anyways. That may help explain the huge smoke volume I was getting?

Even though I had black electrical tape there, the whistle mount stem inside the shell may have been touching one tab on the smoke unit. I noticed a tiny melted spot on the tape that seemed to align with this brass tab that's bent over inside. So I bent that tab flatter and made sure it wouldn't touch. I ran tape around the unit once more.

I reassembled the engine and now it smokes correctly. Well the volume is correct but now there isn't proper flow from the fan. I usually take more than one attempt to get the smoke unit packed perfectly. Enough wick to get good smoke and last, not too much to block the path.

I'm getting there anyways.

Wow, this short became obvious!