DCS 2.0 Locomotive Wiring

Here are some shots of the electronics package in the locomotive.

John, I have dinner guest coming, but I will let you know the details.   Yes, directional lighting, MARS, Marker front and rear, Cab light and 2 ditch lights, plus 2 couplers.

4 pin is smoke, 5 pin motor, 7 pin power in and tach, 8 pin is the LED and such, 12 pin is the lights, speaker and others.  2 pin battery.  You can go to MTH web and see the Diesel Upgradee kit instructions.  They have wiring diagrams and pinouts that are accurate.  That should get you started.  G

Thanks, I'll go look at those.  I figured that the upgrade instructions would be for the newer 3 volt boards, did they do upgrades for these older ones?

Downloaded the instructions, they do seem to be for the 3V unit.  Do you know if the older 5V boards has all the same features?

Only the 3V boards were used in upgrades.  Your 5V board has all the features you talked about.

Are the connectors the same or similar on the 5V boards?  The 12 pin connector seems to be wired as per the upgrade instructions, and there's an 8 pin connector that is unused.

 I use the wiring diagram (modified) that's in the upgrade downloads from MTH. Marty has posted a nicer one that he's added descriptions to.

 I'm just unsure if the older 5volt is the exact same? I believe some soundsets have different configurations of the function outputs complicating matters. It would be hard for that reason to publish exact ones. Joe

Where would the diagram that Marty posted be?

The different functions are interesting, if you load a different sound set, do you get the different functions?  Can you load different sound sets in a locomotive to add functionality, assuming the actual sounds are something you can live with?

John;

Page 16 of the diesel upgrade kit manual shows the full wiring pinouts for the entire PS-2 board.

As was said above, the earlier 5V boards have the same pinouts as the newer boards, but the actual connectors are a different vendor, and will not interchange.

Rod

Swap 12-11 and 12-12.   This is a cheat sheet from the upgrade book.  It just saves you from going crazy from the job to the book.  MTH makes the direct swap boards the guys talked about.  The power board is # AE-0000015 and the processor board (bottom) is # AE-0000016.  If you have a GG-1 with operating pans (I have done all my G motors) you need processor board # AE-0000018.  To use these replacement boards you also need the hardware kit # ic-0000024.  This kit has a 3V speaker, mounting bracket, battery harness and battery.

Marty, any chance of getting that in a higher resolution?

I am headed out and will do it this afternoon.  I can send it to your email.

Great Marty, Thanks!

John,  That is the same picture in the MTH upgrade instructions, which you should be able to get off the web.  You still need the connector or pin orientation as the key to the map.  The boards do not have pin numbers.

When you are looking at the picture and the wires are towards you, that is the connector "back" facing you (you can see the connector terminals showing in the connector).

So above you have the 8 pin connector and the far left is the gray Positive Voltage Common feeding the LED Front and Rear marker lights and the overhead beacon.  The next is the light gray feeding overhead Beacon return (this controls the beacon), Orange is rear marker return and so on.  The far right side wire is purple with stripe and feeds the Front Mars Light.

The 4 pin is th esmoke harness.  Gray is + fan motor, tan is smoke element, blue is fan motor- and purple is heater element.

Keys is reading the map with the connectors showing and wires pointing towards your body.

As far as profiles, you can only load 5V sound files in a 5V board.  The file also contains the speed profile, so while you could load a big steam profile in your diesel, the speed of the unit would be different based on the diesel differences (gear ration and driver sizer.

Best to search the MTH site via SERVICE then "Documents and Files."  Do a search on ALCO PA and then find one that is in the 2000-2005 time frame with 5V sound file but the features you want (MARS Light, Markers, number board etc...)  G

I have figured out the 12 pin connector, so the other one should be similar.  The wild card here is that some of the features may not be active for some sound sets.  I'm assuming the only to activate them is by loading a different sound set with the full DCS system.

Marty, thanks for the scan, it looks great!

or turning on a feature with DCS.  So in either case you need DCS.

Can you turn these features on and off for any sound set?

I can't answer that for sure, but I do think lighting can.  I think the ditch lights yes, under control menu in DCS.  For others I am not so sure.

There are some Premier engine with advanced features.  Try 20-2324-1 or 2321.  This are PAs.  G 

What do you mean by directional lighting?  If it's just the rear light, then all soundsets have this capability so just add a 6V bulb between 12-4 and the shared common lighting wire 12-2.

If you mean directional markers such as green in forward and red in reverse, that's more interesting.  AFAIK the marker outputs are simply on/off (not directional). So you would need 25 cents of additional hardware to do this - for example logic to combine a directional light signal with the Marker light signal - maybe such a board already exists?  As the diagram shows, the named marker signals are on the 8-pin connector and drive LEDs (can't drive 6V bulbs).  What gets tricky is a soundset might be configured (but not by the end-user) to drive markers on a 6V bulb output pin such as an unused Mars light pin.  In either case the DCS remote will display "LMK" on the softkey for you to toggle the markers but the light itself would be hooked to a different connector pin.  In other words, even if you find a compatible soundset with Markers, confirm where the markers are being driven from.

I think I'm in the deep end of the pool with the PS-2 stuff.   Thanks all, a lot to digest.