On 27 Nov 2018, at 9:58 AM, jimalbanowski <jimalbanowski@...> wrote:
I've had both of my PA's quit reading ControlBus that's the smaller RJ with two wires to ControlBus and switch 1 change. I power the PA from and external power supply.
According to the PA manual, DIP Switch 4 is the only one that does anything.
Don't even think of closing JP1 and JP2. That will break the optoisolation as it tries to power the PA from the Track DCC power at pins 3 & 4 of the 4 way socket. This will likely create havoc (magic smoke escaping) unless your computer is a fully floating laptop with no mains or other connection (e.g. to Power Pro serial port) and you have nothing connected to the 6 way socket. These old devices are too precious to risk destroying.
Powering the PA via pins 2 & 5 of the 6 way socket by plugging it into the NCE cab bus is safe and reliable.
Before they quit I did use JMRI to read the data... and on both the CabBus and ControlBus with no crash on either a JMRI Raspberry Pi or Mac... Use to with old PC years ago...
If you have a terminal program on your PC you can try that to see if JMRI/Java is the culprit rather than just pumping the data into the PC..?
Mine is working fine, been dumping data flat out for an hour or more with no crash. I've even done multiple "Freeze Screen" and "Info/Resume" to try to trip a buffer overflow, but not fazed.
BSODs are very unlikely to be caused by JMRI/Java. Very likely to be caused by USB-Serial driver.
For a non-JMRI option, I frequently use CoolTerm on Mac and there is a Windows version:
If using the non-JMRI option, call up the help screen by pressing "?"
From the PA Manual:?
Data Communications
We¡¯ve had good luck using Hyperterminal supplied with Win98 and Win XP.
The communications settings are 38.4kbps, 7 data bits, 1 stop bit. Use the ¡®No Flow Control¡¯ option. The analyzer does not echo characters so you may also want to turn echo on. Also turn on ¡®Append line feeds to incoming line ends¡¯ under the Properties->Settings->ASCII Setup menu.
Before connecting the analyzer to the track or command station verify communications by pressing ¡®?¡± to get a menu of commands and the analyzer software version.
Is the port on the PC a "classic" RS232 or are you using a USB dongle?
