Am I able to use older railsounds 4.0 with the new AC and DC Commanders from ERR.
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Yes, I believe you should be able to. You will need the tether to go to the motherboard that will have both the power board and the railsounds board. I believe the communication protocol is the same for the 4.0 boards as it is with the 5.0 boards which works fine.
C&O Allie posted:Yes, I believe you should be able to. You will need the tether to go to the motherboard that will have both the power board and the railsounds board. I believe the communication protocol is the same for the 4.0 boards as it is with the 5.0 boards which works fine.
Thanks. I am planning to use some railsounds 4.0 boards for some more specific sounds in some engines.
No problem, you just need the power supply and motherboard. Lionel also used to have a powered motherboard, I see it still listed as available for $45. If you wait for the 1/2 price parts sale, usually with the warehouse sale, you could try to pick up a couple of these.
You can also simply pick up the generic power supply and a steam motherboard. For either of these options, you'll need to fabricate some connectors, they're JST-EH and JST-PH family connectors, available at Digikey.
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gunrunnerjohn posted:No problem, you just need the power supply and motherboard. Lionel also used to have a powered motherboard, I see it still listed as available for $45. If you wait for the 1/2 price parts sale, usually with the warehouse sale, you could try to pick up a couple of these.
You can also simply pick up the generic power supply and a steam motherboard. For either of these options, you'll need to fabricate some connectors, they're JST-EH and JST-PH family connectors, available at Digikey.
So if I get one of these and a sound board it will work or the old power board, mother board, and sound board.
Yep, I've done that very thing a few times. I still have an assortment of sound boards and generic power supplies that I keep. I have picked up a few RS5 sound boards for that very upgrade path for a couple of upcoming TMCC conversions.
gunrunnerjohn posted:Yep, I've done that very thing a few times. I still have an assortment of sound boards and generic power supplies that I keep. I have picked up a few RS5 sound boards for that very upgrade path for a couple of upcoming TMCC conversions.
Thanks John. I am planning to use a Rs4 board in an M10000 I have upgraded and for some future projects.
Need to be careful, as there can be compatibility issue depending on the engine your modifying. You can wind up with the serial data corrupted and not working. This than requires a buffer, or you need to go back to the ERR RS5.0. I also have received bad Powered MB from Lionel.
The problem is the ERR products and the Powered MB isolated Serial data via opto couplers and this sometimes degrades signal. Also Jon Z did post that ERR was optimized for the ERR RS5.0. I have also done what GRJ has done, and I also have run into combinations that do not work. You can spend hours trying to resolve it.
Sometime engine works fine for a few minutes and then you loose TMCC control. So.....just be aware. G
GGG posted:Need to be careful, as there can be compatibility issue depending on the engine your modifying. You can wind up with the serial data corrupted and not working. This than requires a buffer, or you need to go back to the ERR RS5.0. I also have received bad Powered MB from Lionel.
The problem is the ERR products and the Powered MB isolated Serial data via opto couplers and this sometimes degrades signal. Also Jon Z did post that ERR was optimized for the ERR RS5.0. I have also done what GRJ has done, and I also have run into combinations that do not work. You can spend hours trying to resolve it.
Sometime engine works fine for a few minutes and then you loose TMCC control. So.....just be aware. G
So what your saying is sometimes the older Rs4 boards don't respond well with the newer commanders
I have not used the DC Commander, but the Cruise CDR and Cruise M YES. G
GGG posted:I have not used the DC Commander, but the Cruise CDR and Cruise M YES. G
Is there any programming I have to do with the older RS4 with the newer boards.
No special programming, but there have been instances where I needed to add a circuit like this to the serial data as George suggests. The worst offenders have been the Cruise Commander M installations for me.
This is my buffer for fixing these issues.
