Quote from: StanAmes on August 10, 2025, 06:26:20 PMmake sure there is DC voltage on the Bachmann's B+ and ground connections

It actually has a battery squashed behind the motherboard, connected to the battery input, and the loco and chuff work fine - except the chuff isn't synchronized.
I will try grounding the chuff trigger, but I think the trigger wire from the Revo is connected to the Chuff Sensor pad and nothing changed.  See my photo on post #14.

Quote from: Greg Elmassian on July 14, 2025, 04:58:18 PMthe bachmann chuff trigger logic was backwards

which brings me to my next issue.  I was thinking I should test the 'chuff' trigger and see if it would synchronize to the wheels.
There are 2 pads on the board: "Chuff SW" and "Chuff Sensor". Why two? Anyway, there's a connection on the Revo for 2 triggers; one for whistle and one for bell/chuff. I initially wired the whistle wire to the Chuff SW pad, and got a constant whistle. Very noisy, as I was testing in my kitchen!

So I did the obvious - read the manual(s) and switched to the bell/chuff wire. The 2-6-0 manual says:
Locomotive Chuff
This locomotive has an optical chuff sensor in each cylinder that can be used to provide a prototypically correct chuff trigger for your sound system. A simple switch is used to select for two chuffs or four chuffs per revolution of the drivers. The switch is located in the front center of the tender
(see figure 21).

To use the locomotive's internal chuff, connect the sound board chuff connections to the main PC board solder pads "Chuff Sensor" and "GND."

So, with the correct wires from the Revo socket to the Chuff Sensor and Gnd pads (see attached pic) it should have worked. Well, it didn't. Anyone have any ideas?

Quote from: Mandaranog on July 18, 2025, 08:54:38 PMthe front truck 1 wheel is broken

Is it broken, or just fallen apart? They are notorious for coming unglued.

Quote from: Greg Elmassian on July 15, 2025, 11:56:40 AMmakes sense with you have lots of "peripherals", meaning lights and smoke, etc.

I think that is only true if all the peripherals are brought to the pnp motherboard, as in the latest gen-2 versions.

Mickey - I just picked up a couple of Revo boards, and one was removed from a loco and is complete with some version of the motherboard. It says "C-16 Main" on the etch, and the switches are underneath. In the attached pic, there's a bunch of wires bottom right: labelled 'batt', 2 pairs of 'pickups' and a 'speaker'. (The Revo shown is an old one without sound. If you want it, I have another that has steam sound.) 

I don't think it would be too difficult to install that in a 4-4-0 tender if you plan a pnp install with battery and DCC. (I have no use for it.) The only thing that you would have to do is pull the front off the smokebox to get at the polarity switch, (that's where the wheel pickups end up and where to feed goes to the motor.) You could convert that switch to a track or off switch and feed the wheel piackups back to the tender.

While writing about the conversion (LargeScaleCentral.com, if anyone is interested,) I realized the 'chuff' trigger was probably set up the same way. The manuals say to connect the trigger on the Revo to the 'chuff sensor" pad on the motherboard.
Should work, but the loco is packed for sale so it will have to wait until the next one!

Stan, you may be right that I was back-feeding the J2 pins from my speaker output! I'll take a look with the ohmmeter.

I asked Revolution the same question:
"None of the speakers in the locomotive work when the Revolution is operating - I have to plug the speakers directly in to the 57002SS card using the supplied cable."
Today I got back the terse reply: "Please refer to the wiring diagram. The speakers are not plug and play." I take that to mean that the Revo board speaker output does not connect to J2-1/3.

Edit: I did check, as I have another Revo board handy. There does not seem to be a connect between the speaker output and the J2-1/3 pins. So the email from Revo was right - spkr is not plug-n-play!

Quote from: Greg Elmassian on June 28, 2025, 11:01:23 PMbout the Aristo/Crest Revolution decoder not having pins dedicated to speaker outputs

At Stan's suggestion, I turned on the sound and checked pins J2-1 and J2-3 with a meter. There was varying voltage on the pins, suggesting the Revo card was outputting the sound signal to those pins. Guess Bachmann doesn't run a trace to the SPKR plug!

And yes, Mr. Bachmann. The Verification you've added is extremely onerous.

Quote from: Greg Elmassian on June 27, 2025, 11:39:47 PMI'm not aware that the interface is published as a spec

I have a document (attached) headed "Topic 0707092 Large Scale Plug/socket V2.1" dating from 2007. It clearly shows J2:1 and J2:3 are speaker connections. No idea where I got the doc, but obviously no-one is following it closely.

I did get the speaker to connect, by wiring the Revo wires to the motherboard pins along the side.
Still doesn't explain why I have to. The pnp spec says J2:1 and J2:3 are speaker output from the daughter board. Does Revo not use the spec?

I just plugged a Revo 57002SS sound board in a Spectrum 2-6-0 (Gen-2) "Raton". It works fine, except there is no sound.
There is a speaker underneath, and a very prominent SPKR plug on the motherboard (see file attached.) If I connect a speaker to the spkr plug on the Revo, I get sound.

Anyone know why there's no connection between the Revo sound card sound output and the Motherboard SPKR plug?  Or is there something subtle I missed?

Quote from: MrPictovid on March 31, 2023, 12:29:31 AMI also connected the Revolution speaker wire to the main board as well.

I'm curious how and why you did that.  My p-n-p motherboard has the speaker prominently connected to it, but with the Revolution 57002SS plugged in, there is no sound. You have to use the Revolution speaker plug.
Why?

Quote from: mickeykelley on June 23, 2025, 08:26:50 AMI would assume all the wiring would already be there except possibly the power wiring from trucks?

Quite the opposite. There is only wiring from the trucks in the 4-4-0 tender.

Bachmann rewired the Gen-2 2-6-0 [post 2017?] with a motherboard and all the loco wiring comes to the tender in 2 huge plugs. The 4-4-0 has a plug for the tender pickups and a spare plug for a rear headlight (used on the SPC version.)

Quote from: [email protected] on June 02, 2025, 09:18:57 PMWas the manual or wiring diagram ever posted on the forum?

Bachmann have been updating documents by scanning and posting them. The 45 ton diesel is here:
https://shop.bachmanntrains.com/index.php?main_page=documents&cPath=8_157_264

Quote from: [email protected] on June 05, 2025, 12:46:35 AMfor just one truck.

I have a small home-made 0-4-0 switching engine with that truck. I have also worked on an original loco.

There are 4 wiper pads on top of the truck, as shown on the PDF wiring diagram. The 2 side ones connect to the wheel pickups, and the front/back pair are the motor.
To use the truck on track power, you connect the outer pair to the front/back pair. My loco is battery powered so it just has wires from the motor pads.

P.S. after a while, the plungers wiping on the pads stop working well, and you find the loco stops with one truck running and the other not!  We soldered wires directly to the pads to bypass the plungers.   

Quote from: Thomas111 on May 04, 2025, 01:32:12 PMI only have a 5-foot radius (LGB R2) available. I'd like to ask if this locomotive can drive through it, even though the instruction says 6.5 feet

Thomas, your translator seems to have confused radius and diameter.  The loco needs 6.5 ft diameter curves.
Google says the R2 track is 5.4 ft diameter.