Thank you Ken, Dave, Perry, Cliff and Inobu!
Ok, here is the culmination of my frustrating experience...
Finally, I was able to get the USB cable to work.? Oddly, in another port on the laptop.? For whatever reason it would not work in the original port, although, the short extension and the LocoBuffer II do work in that port so I know the port works.? Who knows...who
cares.
I am going to take your advice of using a longer LocoNet cable.? I will run it under the house and into the dining room, where the Dispatcher desk is.? The whole reason for a cord of any kind is that I was having drop-out issues with the wifi connection between
the layout and the dispatcher's computer.? We ran this through a master/slave arrangement.? So, no point in having TWO computers doing the work of one AND dealing with wifi issues too!
Solution...use a longer LocoNet cable, under the house, from layout to laptop and two (perhaps three) monitors. (Depends on how much layout I can get on two monitors...A REAL CTC machine would be much better!!!).? Currently, we had been using one laptop with
three levels of track on one screen.? Terribly small and no option for a CTC type machine on there.
Thank you everyone for your help in figuring this out!? Now...when are you all coming out to visit?? ;-)
By the way, I updated the blog in case you looked in the past few days and only saw old info.? Someday I will get a track plan made and put on there.? Link is below.
Happy New Year,
Frank
