MTH PS1 Y6B to TMCC

Find a 10 pin tether and put the ERR board in the tender. 

I use the MTH 10-pin tether for my TMCC upgrades.  I put the Cruise Commander and RailSounds Commander in the tender, and I stick the Super-Chuffer II and Chuff-Generator in the locomotive.

I looked on the MTH site and there are a bunch of 10-pins.  any suggestion on which ones?  I was thinking BC-1000002 and BC-1200201

is it possible to use a wireless?  or do I need the power pickup from the engine to power the boards?  Can I, or should I add a power pickup from the tender?

Wireless ain't happening here.  

I use the AG-0000039 locomotive PCB with the 10-pin connector, and then either the BC-1000002 90 degree model or the BC-2000000 straight diesel one if I have room for it to flex.

I add power pickup from the tender whenever I can.  Many times I have to fabricate the mount for the roller, but most of the stuff I'm converting only has two rollers, and another one back on the tender really helps with the reliability.  Toss in a 2A PTC in series with the power wires to the tender, protects the wiring if you derail.

I'm doing a full TMCC upgrade on a 6-18006 Reading T1 4-8-4 right now, here's the added tender pickup.  The mount is a stack of Styrene blocks glued together and mounted to the truck and then the roller is mounted to the top.  I blacken the white Styrene to make it less obvious.

Got it in, but it is like the engine does not recognize TMCC.  It runs as conventional, what did i do wrong?  

i have checked my connections. I have an antenna, i have run a tmcc engine on the track that I know works, i have swapped the R2LC.  

Well, top suspect would be the antenna is shorted to the frame.  If all the stuff works in conventional but not in TMCC, the R2LC and the antenna are the primary suspects.

Not sure what you're trying to illustrate there, I know how to wire up the DC commander.   The only important point for this issue is the antenna connection and what is and isn't connected to it.

i know you know, but this is what I did so I was hoping you could tell me what I did wrong.

Nothing that I see there is wrong, but like I said, time to check the antenna, top suspect in these cases.  Since this is in a diecast tender, how did you insulate the shell so the antenna is effective?  Are you SURE the shell is insulated from the frame?

i have not put the shell on, before i put itback together i wanted to make sure it works. 

I don't see any obvious issues if the antenna is not grounded and you've swapped the R2LC, that's the whole TMCC signal processing path.

I have this somewhat solved.  I have another DC Commander so I swapped it out. Everything works except moving forward and reverse.  I even used the same R2LC.   So what does this mean about the other DC commander?  dead?

Hard to say what happened.  Since it runs conventional, I'd be looking closely at the PCB and see if something is shorted to the antenna connection from the terminal block to the antenna connection on the R2LC, that would be pin-23, same row, opposite end from the square pad on the R2LC.