Legacy ZW stopped working

Hey, thanks, Ill keep it in mind.

@Flashbulb Olsen posted:

I have a Legacy ZW with 4  180 bricks I bought when it first came out. worked fine all that time and now  just stopped receiving the signal from the base. The cab sees the base and all my data. Im seeing that these ZW units were not that good and maybe a chip fails or the mother board fails. (remember the backshop?). The other thing is as a backup, I connected my original TMCC system but half the buttons don't work so its not an option. Were those units known to have keyboard failures? I can control track voltage and run my post war stuff but can't run any of my 20 legacy locos in conventional.

I guess my question is, where do I go from here. My bricks work fine.

Did you say you are trying to operate your Legacy locomotives in conventional mode using a Cab2 to control a ZW-C?  Maybe I'm not understanding something.

@MartyE posted:

Did you say you are trying to operate your Legacy locomotives in conventional mode using a Cab2 to control a ZW-C?  Maybe I'm not understanding something.

I agree, the way that is written is very puzzling.  I'm pretty certain there is no way to run a Legacy Engine (or a TMCC engine for that matter) in conventional mode when there is a command base present.  The engine will see the command base signal and just sit there, no matter how much you change the voltage on the track.

Flashbulb, when you say you can run your post war locos, do you mean you unhooked the command base and then used the handles?

-Dave

Yes,i can use the ZW controlling the voltage levels.  So that part works. I guess its the board in the ZW. So the question now is, what do I have to do to get legacy working again. Can I have a system using my 4 power supplys?

I think you're saying that you can't run the Legacy engines with the CAB2 (which is running them with Legacy not conventional). So you turn up the voltage to 18 vac with the ZW and then try to operate the Legacy engines with the CAB2 and it doesn't work. Is that it?

We still need clarification for sure.  I'm thinking it sounds like the ZW works in conventional with no command base plugged in, but of course you can't control the Legacy engines then with no command base.  If the command base is plugged in, it sounds like the ZW is not responsive to commands (and puts out no power, in that state on any of the 4 channels, presumably).  So you would have engine control, but can't get any voltage out of the ZW.  That sounds like the catch-22 here.

Bricks could be used directly to the track with lock-ons made for the bricks or matching pigtails spliced to the wires running to the track (engines will respond to commands as long as any power source and command base signal are present), but of course you lose the safety of the halt button in the case of a derailment, since the track power is no longer controllable via the remote.  Though the circuit breaker on the bricks is hailed as very fast, so that may not be too big of a deal.

-Dave

Shut the Legacy base off, then use the handles to control the Legacy engines. If the Legacy engines see any signal from the command base they can not run in conventional. Try to run the Legacy engines from the cab 2 with 18 volts on the track. That's the way most of us operate.

Jim D.

The halt button will still halt the Legacy engines, but that is only useful for avoiding collisions. Relying on the 180 watt brick breakers is the best immediate benefit for derailments.

So...the loss of halt AND power off is not really a big loss.

When my ZW-C was Legacy enabled, after the throttles were turned up it would always need to have each track addressed on the CAB-2 one by one then spin the red knob to get the voltage cranked up to 18v. What a PITA.  I finally disabled Legacy on the ZW-C and just use the handles, if and when I run something conventional....which isn’t all that often.

@MrMoe50 posted:

When my ZW-C was Legacy enabled, after the throttles were turned up it would always need to have each track addressed on the CAB-2 one by one then spin the red knob to get the voltage cranked up to 18v. What a PITA.  I finally disabled Legacy on the ZW-C and just use the handles, if and when I run something conventional....which isn’t all that often.

True (at least for A&D, B&C would do the exact opposite, start at full(where ever handles were set) and you would have to dial them down).  But that is perfectly normal per the design.  Annoying (to those always running command) maybe, but certainly not a malfunction.  (To those who used the transformer to run conventional, it was the B&C starting at full that was a PITA!..... ).   When you say you disabled it, I assume you mean set to Track 0 the way the manual suggests?  That's a great way to do it if it is working properly.  The ZW-C under discussion seems to not be working properly with respect to reacting to Legacy/TMCC.

The OP has a setup that he says was working and now something changed.  I don't think he's saying he didn't know how it worked to start with.  Something changed, and so far is sounds like the ZW may no longer be responding to Legacy or TMCC.

-Dave

Interesting to me is that I never thought about turning the legacy off totally. If one does, do the handles still work the same way? A and D have to be returned to zero and then turned up?