Some might remember that I built a testset for Lionel RCMC boards that I posted about a couple years ago.
Building a Lionel RCMC Board Test Fixture
Well, since Lionel has moved on and all new Legacy has the LCPx boards, and the Lionchief + 2.0 product is based on the LCP2 board as well. I've started to see more of these showing up on my doorstop, and after acquiring several unknown versions, I decided it was time to do something about it.
Some time back Jon Z. of Lionel fame has suggested that the LCP boards were really not that much different than the RCMC. They are the logical progression with some added features, and of course, cost reduction. That being the case, he suggested that I consider a set of cables to match the LCP boards to my existing tester. Recently, I got to thinking that might be a low-cost and faster avenue to having the ability to test those boards. That being the case, I set about seeing if this was practical.
As it turns out, while there are many similarities, the actual cabling is considerably different for many of the connections. However, all of this was fairly minor and able to be accommodated by a bunch of custom cables. One of the obvious missing links was the fact that the LCP3 board has up to six input switches, and my testset only has four. Not to be deterred, I just added the extra switches in the cables for the respective board types.
I ended up with mostly common cables, but there had to be two different switch cables as they used different sized connectors. The square boxes on the switch cables are my little 3D printed switch boxes to hold the extra one or two switches needed for the various board types. Those switches are in addition to the four that were on the testset already.
After fixing a couple cable pinning mistakes, the cable pack is a rousing success! I was able to run through all the LCP2, LCP3, and a couple of Lionchief + 2.0 boards that were sitting on my bench waiting to be tested. And for my little switch packs, I even got to use the 3D printer. 
The nice thing about the new boards is all the Legacy versions have a direct output for the IR LCS Sensor track, so I can just add an IR LED to my cable and trigger a sensor track to get the ID from a board. I can also talk to them with the CAB3 Bluetooth and get the board ID that way as well.
95% of the time, I just use the PS/3 steam or diesel cable sets, that's it. The only reason I even have some of the HO cables is to help a guy at the shop occasionally with his HO repairs. However, there's still well over half the connectors on the PS/3 testset that have never had a cable connected to them, and probably never will. 
