Free Black or Orange Modules for Legacy

They are all the same.  As I was alluding to in one of the other threads.

So, one wonders, why charge MORE for a module you don't have to pre-program and less for ones that take extra production work?

Which again was my point.  The charge for 1.51 IMO should be at minimum the cost of 2 black modules roughly.

If you had to pay $40 for upgrades every time you'd probably learn or find someone to make them for you.  Right?

From this thread...

From what I understand, they are the same modules.  They are set to be read only or read/ write depending on the need by the factory.  It would seem the writable module should be cheaper as you do not have to go through the procedure to set them to "read only".

Mine didnt work but after your picture i see what i did wrong works now. Thanks for the info.

And make them read only.

 for the blue modules, you have to program them with the version you're shipping.

John, bear with me I am new to this. By "cut the pin", is this done with a exacto knife or with small wire cutters? 

Nice one! Gunrunnerjohn. I could not get hold of any black modules on my last US trip.

 This saves the hassle of getting one shipped to the UK.

I'll try this tommorow.

Cheers

Nick

Jeff, you can cut the pin right at the chip with small cutters or an X-acto knife.  Just make sure that's the only pin you cut.  It just has to be floating, however you do it.

Let us know how you make out with the mods Nick.

I confess I thought it would be harder, I was a bit surprised to see the EEPROM chips in there.

John

It worked great and now I have two black modules and now I am upgraded to 1.51 for my base and Cab2 Thank you very much.

Great find John.

Ron

Nice work John, I now have 6 that work great I will be giving two with file on them to my brother so he can upgrade.

Hacking at its best John!

John, I think you post is going to be responsible for many people upgrading to 1.51 that may not have. As noted above people with the savy and extra blue modules will be making them available to people afraid of the download process. You have changed the world...lol.  Sincere thanks. 

John, hacking in the finest sense helping those who are victims of the big boy's uncalled for price structuring. Now if only someone could hack MTH's proto and Lionel's TMMC and Legacy programs to allow consumers to customize station and crew talk announcements, that would be fantastic. Any computer savy programmers among our forum members who are willing to take on such a feat?

I'm glad it worked out for everyone.  Like I said, it was way easier than I imagined, I just opened one up because I was curious what was in them.

I think that's just a bit more complicated!

I just lifted the pins of the ones in the picture.  However, after verifying this works as intended, I just did six modules by simply cutting the pin off the chip right at the chip.  I verified all six modules work as intended after the surgery.  The black paint is drying on the shells now.

I also decided to change the topic, these really end up free if you do them yourself.

Success!!!  took the module into the sun and saw the pin used an X-acto knife tip and fliped out the pin. 

Thanks John!

John, Thanks for posting this great tip!.

Success, 1.51 installed (upgraded direct from 1.3)

Nick

I see no reason that the Orange modules would be any different than the blue or black ones, I'll bet the white generic ones are the same as well.

Piece of cake!   I just made six of them, I even took the shells down and sprayed them black.  If I weren't so lazy, I'd probably buff off the paint from the Lionel logo and make them look just right.

I guess it's working for sure.

One tip for folks converting multiple modules at one time.  Keep the two halves of the shell together and put them together as one at the end.  When you pull them apart, the glue doesn't always separate exactly the same, so the best fit will be the original pieces together again.

As I said early on.  They are all the same.  Just depends on what they were originally purposed for if they were to be read only or writable.  I really don't see why this is such a revelation. 

I credit John for doing the discovery.  But you had to believe that the modules were the same and just were write protected in some fashion.

Thank you John!

You will be known as we called em in the IT a "Ethical Hacker" Breaking limitations on product so that you can do it yourself at home instead of incurring extra expense.

The original term of hacker was simply to change the physical "Hardware" and wiring so that a item modify a behavior to whatever it is you seek.

I feel that sharing these kinds of tricks are very useful.

I agree Marty, I did think that maybe they used OTP parts for the R/O modules, but when I found the EEPROM, the rest was obvious.

The white modules will not work, they only have 1 memory chip

not the 2 required to program the base and cab2.

The orange modules most likely are the same as the white ones.

I think moving the "zero ohm" resistor R1 to R2 location will accomplish the same thing.  Maybe easier than cutting pins on an IC.

White modules?  LOL!  I forgot all about those ones.  Never did use them.  Interesting.  I guess they don't need a lot to basically do nothing.

I still suggest moving the zero ohm jumper, as the Atmel spec sheet states that the floating of the Write Protect pin is OK as long as the pin has less than 3pf coupling to the external circuitry. 

Floating the pin can cause corrupted data to be programmed into the module, and while it may seem that all is well, your upgraded Cab2 or Base may exhibit strange behavior from bad code. 

Not worth the risk, move the resistor, or get a black module to be safe.

John,

First off, Great tip on re-using those blue modules.  I plan to mod 2 of mine by moving the resistor.

I think people should be cautioned that they are not upgrading the system as per Lionel's specs.  If the CAB2 gets corrupted as Jon pointed out, and causes a problem, its really on the user since they did not want to spend the $17 for the black modules.

Odds are the upgrade will go OK, but if something starts acting weird, who would even think to ask the user how the system was last updated?  It may be hard to figure that one out.

Joe

FWIW, I have two real black modules I use for upgrades, I'm going to use these for storing configurations.

I really started this on a whim, I just figured I had all the useless blue modules and decided to see what was in one of them. 

John

I am totally not seeing the "jumped wire" can you highlight the change in the pics

has anyone who removed the two pins had any troulble with their update?  I have not.

John,

Great info. Worked the first time.

Thanks,

Frank

John would you post a larger picture of the zero resister changes with more descriptive lables for us vision challenged OF's.  Thanks Bruce

Interesting that the Zero Ohm resistor seems to be marked as a diode (D1) both on the board and the device.

Pete

Yep, but there was really a zero ohm resistor there, and the pins go to VCC and ground from it, so I figured it was the right component.  Not to mention it was the only choice, other than that cap at the lower left.

The bottom legs of the "R" are hidden by the chip, making it look like a "D" in the photo.

My blue module has a 100 ohm resistor, not a zero ohm resistor.  Perhaps the idea was that, unlike a zero ohm resistor, you could force a voltage across the resistor to rewrite the module.

My Atmel parts do not have a 24C512 designation on them, but rather ATML H844 2FB-2   8G7001

Dale, did you try moving the resistor to see if it works?

I like the idea of the 100 ohm, it probably would have been a good idea for all of them.  I believe mine were zero ohm, but I may missed the value.  In any case, since I just wanted to ground the pin, the wire did the trick.

That part number comes back to the same capacity EEPROM, so I suspect it's just an updated (or old) part.  The first set of pictures was from a 1.0 version CAB unit, that's the only one I actually looked at the part number on.

The beauty of all of this is the blue modules were junk anyway, I'd never use them again for anything once we've moved well past 1.3.

John, I agree pulling the resistor (there are several values 0 ohm or 100ohm etc. depending on the manufacturer of the module), and jumpering as you have shown is the best solution. Thank you for detailing the solution for folks to follow.

And I will state my caution again, the Legacy Operating system is very complex and even a single bit error in the programming or reading of the module during an update can manifest errors that are unpredictable.  Some integrity checks are performed, during the process, however the risk is real if you float/cut the pins.

I think I paid about $15 for my black modules...so, given the cost of this hobby, other than the curiosity factor, why go down this modify route and risk potential problems?

My little experiment started simply because I was curious as to what was in the modules.

John,

How did you get the module itself apart?

Doug

This was handy for me as I haven't been able to get a black module (out of stock).

I hoped to pick one up last month when I was in the States but none of the local shops had any. One dealer did have a massive bag of blue modules though.... should have asked for a few.

 Nick

I start at one end and tap a small screwdriver in each side, then move to the other side.  The object of the exercise is to break the glue bond on one side and then you can open it up.  Start with the connector facing you and use a small flat blade screwdriver on each side.  Then work from the opposite end the same way.

You'll sometimes put a couple of chips in the side of the module, but I've done half a dozen, and I haven't killed any of them yet.

Now I have some modules to play with storing configurations.

What do you mean by this?  Are you referring to the database or engine information?

Now I have some modules to play with storing configurations.

Yep, I'll be building an engine database for club use.  As we figure out mixes, I may have several configurations.

I'm always keeping the latest version on a pair of modules, and maybe two sets.  People keep asking to borrow them to update their Legacy.

I used a small saw for structure building small miter box saw or track cutting saw. Saw a little on both sides and the module comes apart cleanly. I did start at the rounded top end until the saw went flat.

Just did my upgrade to 1.51 using blue modules using Johns idea and worked perfectly. 

I had version 1.2 so I could not upgrade directly to 1.51. The computer could not communicate properly with the base using version 1.2. Lionel sent me the 1.3. Blue modules today (free if you call them). After installing 1.3 I made a backup. I then installed 1.51 and restored the backup. The edit engines feature worked great and I cleaned up a few problems. 

Great upgrade, especially jumping from 1.2. Also I have two new "black mods" after I do John's modification. now I have too many black modules...last month I had a hard time finding them and paid $17.95 for one. Thanks Gunrunner. 

I presume you noticed you have to be a bit careful with the saw not to chop the little PCB and kill the module, right?

Glad it worked out for you.  Did you see the "upgraded" modification involving moving the zero ohm resistor?  Given that it's pretty easy if you use wire and not try to position that little resistor, I recommend that method if possible.  I would have initially done that, but I didn't tumble to the fact that the resistor was a configuration jumper.

While I really don't believe that there's any realistic possibility of having enough capacitance with that pin cut off to be an issue, Jon had a point that anything's possible.  If you ground the pin by moving the jumper, there is zero chance that it'll ever be a problem, so if possible, that's what I'd do.

So I take it that you don't cut the two pins. Just remove the resistor and add the jumper .

OK you lost me John. Do you remove the resistor and put it over to the other side or get rid of the resistor and put a jumper on the other side(left side).

OK got it.

Gunrunnerjohn,

Thanks for the info.  I've modded 10 of these.

Jim

You have a lifetime supply!

John,

Thanks for passing this on,naturally the first module I tried was glued to be never opened, but I did get it opened.

Did you notice on the module there's a dot and on the inside you see a hole that is at the spot between the 2?  I wonder if this is used some how to jump the 2 so it can be writable??   What I'm saying is,does Lionel use this hole to jump the 2 and make the module writeable and remove it cover the hole and make it for 1 use??

Jon Z ?????

Doug

Well, if the resistor is a 100 ohm resistor, it would be possible to short it to ground and write the module.  Perhaps that's why Jon mentioned that the resistors could be zero ohm or 100 ohm, the 100 ohm resistors would have allowed for writing before the module was sealed in the plastic.  I checked, and the first one I took apart was a 1.0 module that has a 0 ohm resistor, didn't even look at the others, maybe the later ones are 100 ohm resistors.

John

The two I took apart were 100ohms. The number on the top was 101 and I crossed referenced it to 100 ohms. I measured it to be 98.65 ohms with my Fluke meter. I did the first choice which was to cut the pins and so far I have had no issues that I can find. I will maybe pickup two Black modules when I can find them local.

John, Great tip!! I cut the pins and loaded up ver 1.5. It worked perfectly. I am not worried about corrupt data. I would have to assume that during the write stage  there is error checking, and if there had been any corrupt data it would have shown up then.

I had no problems with the ones I cut the pin, but Jon Z had a good point.  I didn't realize the jumper was actually there for that purpose.  Since it was there, and I have the tools to move it, I decided to adopt that method if I do any more.  I have enough for my use, I bought two and converted five of my blue ones.  Somehow, I think that will keep me in black modules.

I updated the method of modifying the modules early in the thread with both methods, you can choose either method.

John, thanks for the work around.  Used your method and now up to date.. Thanks

John,

Used your modification a few weeks ago on a couple of otherwise idle blue modules and it worked perfectly.

Was able to complete my Legacy 1.5 upgrade.

Thanks again for sharing your knowledge.

Mike

Glad it worked out, it's a small payback for all the good information and advice I've received here.

I have used the ChipQuik kits for many laptop repairs. The SMD resistor in these modules has only two pins, but this system makes it easy if you really feel that you must move the resistor.

You need the LSU software with a PC connected to your base. There is a selection to backup the data base to your PC. All the info is in the base so you effectively are backing up both. 

Yep

you can find it here. http://www.lionel.com/legacyutilitydownload.html

it also is used to make the upgrade modules. 

The backup data goes from the base into your PC not

into the black module.You can load selected engine data,

with v 1.51 software,into a black module and then into a

different base but you need the Legacy utility program to

to either.

John, thanks.

I did a module now !!!

The second one is even easier, you're a pro now.

Dumb question- does this all apply to just the Legacy or the CAB-1 too?

CAB1 has no modules, this is for the Legacy blue modules only.   Blue modules are the software upgrade modules, they have the same chipset as the black modules, just a different jumpering option to prevent writing.  The mod I did was to remove the write protect provision.

Got it...doesn't apply to me then.

Thanks John.

Maybe when you buy your Legacy system...

I just found this thread and it helped me a lot. Thanks gunrunnerjohn!

Glad it worked for you.

I just revisited a blue module I made that wouldn't program and found that when I slid the Exacto knife down along the blue module side, it cut a pin loose. Not easy to see. I resoldered that pin and now it works. There is no easy way to split the case.

Splitting the case is by far the most difficult part.  Some of them come apart pretty easy, others are a bugger!

I've taken to moving the little resistor, no chance of cutting the wrong lead that way.

Well, I like it to crack along the seams.  When's the last time you cracked a walnut and it fell perfectly in half?

I put an exacto knife into the seam on the side and tap it down cutting the seam open. Where I went wrong was allowing the knife blade go too far into the module...and it cut some of the pin connections on the upper chip. I didn't see that right away...nice and clean cut .

I do something similar, but I try not to chop the module guts in the process!

Once you get a little movement, you can normally pry them apart pretty easily, it's just breaking that bond on one side that takes the time.

I used a box cutter, starting at pin end and then once I got some movement i just pressed down the full blade and pry instead of slice. worked great. glued them back together and painted and labeled.

You're welcome Carl, glad it worked for you.

John;

Thanks for pioneering this great information.

Very handy stuff!

You're welcome Rod.