Re: Mar. fun run

["Steve Wise" <swise@aoot.com>]

| I have also partially fixed the shutdown problem.  All tracks will power
down when the HALT button is
| pressed on a CAB-1 controller.  Tracks 2, 3, and 4 will power down when
the E-STOP
| button is pressed on an MTH controller and a HALT command is sent to any
TMCC engine running
| on track 1.  So far, I haven't been able to get the TPC controlling track
1 to power down if you press
| the E-STOP button on the MTH controller.

I tried this on my setup and see the same results.  I thought it was
working, but what is really happening is the TIU is killing power.  I
recheked after an ESTOP and my TPC is still hot on the output side...

Here's my theory on what is happending:

The CAB-1 HALT is sent to the TMCC command base via a radio signal.  The
TMCC command base forwards these signals out the serial output, which
delivers the HALT command to the TPC.  So when you hit CAB-1 HALT, the TPC
gets this command and shuts off power.

The MTH E-STOP, however, is transmitted to the TMCC command base via the
serial line (not radio waves).  Maybe the command base does NOT echo input
commands from the input wire to the output wire on the serial line?  I could
belive this, because I don't think Lionel ever envisioned a competitor's
command control system driving the TMCC command base via that serial
port -and- the serial port concurrently driving devices like the TPCs.  I
think it was originally designed to feed commands to a computer or take
commands from a computer, but not relay messages from the input to the
output wires of the serial cable.

NOW: It might be possible then to hook the TIU serial output directly to the
TPC to force the power-kill.  The problem then is you have 2 sources of
serial output feeding into the TPC:  the TIU output and the TMCC command
base output.  You need both since the CAB-1 commands come from the TMCC
command base output, and the HALT command from the MTH TIU is needed by the
TPC for emergency all-stop conditions (an important event as we all know :).

The problem then is that you cannot simply wire these both into the TPC
because you'll get collissions when both are transmitting concurrently.   I
do think, though, that we could build or buy a merger device that has to
serial FIFOs on the input sides and coordinates merging these two signals
onto one output FIFO for transmission.

Clear as mud?

This is all just a theory though...I could be all wet...

;-)

BTW:  If we get this all correct, we should post our results and how we did
it to the OGR forums...