Ed's anaysis is pretty much spot-on. Most, if not all contemporary DC power packs no longer offer selectable pulse power. The pulsedf DC is continiously present in some form.
These pulses are being interpreted by the Lionel's electronics as a command control signal and appear as gibberish to the board's software. I have an old MRC ContolMaster X and that works fine with the Lionel electronics. Likewise my GML Enterprises DC throttle works fine. My SD70(and Y3) run on both with no trouble. However, a much newer MRC 6000 and a Bachmann DC pack confuses them. Lionel HAS been working on a solution. They do want to nail down this problem. Rich G(ajnak) --- In [email protected], "Ed" <Loizeaux@...> wrote: > > > ....they will not work on DC with pulse. I also don't know what that means. > > Ben Trousdale > > Some DC power packs have a switch for pulse power. When pulse power is > turned on, the output of the power pack is half-wave rectified DC. It looks > like a bumpy road on an oscilloscope. The purpose of pulse power is to > encourage slow smooth starts. It would not surprise me if pulse power > qualifies as non-smooth DC as far as Lionel is concerned. > > Other power packs will make an extra effort to provide for slow smooth > starts. One way to do this is to superimpose voltage spikes over the > gradually-increasing DC. These spikes are larger at very low voltages and > gradually decrease and fade away as the DC voltage is increased. This type > of power pack would also be considered non-smooth and probably cause > difficulties with the Lionel SD70. > > Older motors frequently did not exhibit slow smooth starts with pure DC. > Thus, the makers of power packs used pulse power and/or voltage spikes to > help overcome friction (aka "stiction") when first starting to move. Newer > expensive motors (like "coreless") do not have as much difficulty starting up > slowly and smoothly on plain DC. > > I suspect the Lionel internal electronics gets confused when seeing > non-smooth DC and might interpret it as being DCC or Legacy or something else > by accident. > > Just a guesstimate, but a reasonable starting point for experimentation. > > Good luck...Ed Loizeaux > ------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
