Early PS2 5 volt board signal problem?

It takes approximately 3 minutes of power to the engine to fully charge the BCR1 to a strong enough capacity to provide the charge that is necessary to store information permanently in memory on the engine when the engine is shutdown.

Try this on test track...

1.) Put the engine on the test track.

2.) Power up the engine and let it sit for 3 minutes before doing anything with the handheld. This should fully charge the BCR1.

3.) Then add the engine to your handheld controller. You are likely to see a message on your handheld that says - engine found, engine id changed to xx (where xx might be 12). That means the engine now needs to store that back into memory in the engine PS2 board. If the engine is new, the default engine id is 1 which is likely in use in your handheld and not available for this engine.

4.) Shutdown the engine, turn off the power to the engine (which will save the new engine id to match the handheld), and power off the handheld (to make sure the new engine is stored in your handheld.

5.) Power up the engine on the test track, then power up the handheld, and see if the handheld can talk to the engine. If so, then move the engine to your layout.

45 to 60 secs is sufficient to charge the BCR.  Battery circuit may not be working.  Power up for 1 minute.  Turn power off.  Does it play shutdown sounds?  If not that is your issue.  Try an alkaline battery as a quick test.  If that works, either bad bcr, or charging circuit not working.  G

Thanks, both of you.  George, the bad battery circuit appears to be the correct hypothesis.  Same behavior with engine forgetting its ID and needed re-adding on test track with 2 different BCR’S, and no shut-down sounds when power cut off.  With 9v battery, all is well, remembers its ID, runs on layout with good communication in all areas of mainline, and plays shut-down when power is cut off.

So, does this mean for practical purposes I need to maintain a reasonably fresh 9v battery in the loco long term?  I’m guessing a battery circuit repair is either not possible, or too costly to be practical when shipping both ways is added to whatever the repair cost.  Or is that wrong?

If it’s “keep a good 9v in loco”, assuming they start fresh (this one tests 9.66v no-load, so it’s fresh), how long is it likely to be safe to go between changes?  I’m ignorant as to whether a dead battery start-up could damage these boards as it sometimes does old ProtoSound boards; is that also a concern here?

Thanks again, wish your store were around the corner instead of across the country!

Don

Have been reading what I can find about failed charging circuits with 5 volt PS2 boards.  One comment indicates I may have overloaded the charging circuit by installing the BCR1 before I first powered up the loco, and caused a charging circuit failure right then.  I can't find much about how anyone has dealt with a failed charging circuit, including whether it is safe or harmful to maintain the loco long term using alkaline 9v batteries instead of rechargeables or BCR's.

It will work all the way until it doesn't anymore. I mean what else can you say? It's a 5V. They aren't easily fixable, kind of a dead end, lucky if they work, sad when they don't.

And, there was just the announcement that boards capable of replacing this 5V with a PS3/2 stacker are coming in

https://ogrforum.com/...c/171907990267094459

If the charging circuit isn't working, then you might want to try one of my YLB - RailSounds Battery Replacement as a replacement.  It's not used if you have a charging circuit, but if you've verified that the charging circuit doesn't work, this probably would be a permanent replacement battery for that specific engine.

One thing I would strongly suggest is - check the speaker in the engine to see if the magnet has flaky metal shavings all over it. That is a very common problem with the speakers that came with the early Protosound 2.0 5V engines. If the speaker has any metal flakes on it, it will only get worse and will ultimately short out and take the sound chip on the board with it. The board can't be fixed, so you permanently loose the sound. If you are currently hearing garbled sound, you definitely have that problem. Replacement speakers are cheap and easy to come by.

I don't think anything you did caused this.  Plenty of folks use BCR in 5V and they work fine.  Some 5V boards have had repair mod for the charge circuit I have seen, but yes I don't think it is practical repair.  You can use a rechargeable and if it has a charge port, charge it with the MTH charger when engine no longer retains memory.  I imagine it will last pretty long.  Especially if you do a DCS shutdown while on track power.  G