Legacy Base Issue - Who would have guessed?

  I don't have command. Too much like work was for my tastes.

How these cords go bad in a static position where people don't go has always been a mystery to me.    

That's why I prefer cereal lines.

Yeah, I would agree.  My base is pretty old, as it came with version 1.2.  I bought it years ago.  Once I plugged the Y cable in, it never gets touched or moved.  How it went bad is beyond me.  There are no frayed wires or bent pins.  All I know is when that cable is connected, the base goes nuts.  The yellow comes on when I send a command and it floods the track with signals to the last engine I talked to, making it go crazy.  Put the new cable in, and all is normal.

What is the other end of that serial cable connected to?

The base would go nuts when the cable was plugged into the serial port. I had nothing connected to the cable. Unplug the cable and the base would stop acting up.

Normally I use the cable to connect my tmcc command base, zstuff data driver, and accessory voltage controller.  when testing with Lionel, they asked me to plug the cable in but leave off all devices.  They were assuming a device was causing the problem and then I would connect one device at a time. I never got that far since the cable duplicated the problem.

Seems something was shorted inside the cable, that can happen.  It's pretty rare for molded cables, but quite common for cables with soldered or crimped pins.