i have an old tas ucub and a newer err railsound commander im going to install in a lionel dc motor diesel. Is there a serial data take off from the tas board i can use to run the railsounds in command mode?
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I checked a schematic from 1999 and it shows a Leoco 4 pin connector marked CON4. The pinout is 1=3rd rail; 2=ground; 3=no connect; 4=serial data. See if CON4 is on the version you have.
Lou N
Lou, I see that TAS had some boards available with 8A or 15A drivers. Do you know whats the difference between these boards ? Was a simple changing of the triacs the only difference ? I am converting a PS1 Centipede to TMCC and have several TAS boards Both SAW and Cruise. I see people drive four small 365-385 can motors with the 8A version but seems to me you don't have much head room in the event of a stall. Do you know if it would be an easy mod to upgrade to 15A perhaps only changing out the triacs ? Might you have the schematics showing the changes ? j
A step in the right direction would be a healthier heatsink for the triacs. A triac handling 12 amps would be dissipating around 8 watts, that's a lot of power to shed unless you have a significant heatsink.
The 15A triacs were from Teccor, now Littlefuse. That is the only difference. See Digikey F7295-ND. And do heed JRG's advice above. Triacs are a PNPN junction arrangement thus a lot of insertion loss. That times the load will generate alot of heat as described above!!
Lou N
Thanks guys. I make some pretty good copper sinks. Thing about copper vs aluminum sinks, copper absorbs heat faster but aluminum dissipates it faster. I figure, first order of business get the heat out of the device and copper does that better. Seems to me that the TAS boards have a better sink than the Lionel driver boards As luck would have it I bought some 4015L5 Teccor triacs on ebay a little over a year ago thinking I would give them a try I just lost my nerve not wanting to waste a good board on a gamble. Seems like less of a gamble now. I ran across an article on thermal conduction a while ago you might find interesting. Boron Arsenide ! Where do we get some of the stuff ? Electrical insulator, thermal conductor five times better conduction than copper j
