Hornby Class 50 - DCC users

Ah ha. Good news. One board winging its way back to Hornby tomorrow...

Ian J.

Mmm, seen how many wires you have to unsolder then solder back when the new board arrives, and they are all the same colour!

Nick

There are no wires to unsolder or solder back since the wires are not soldered to the board in the first place, just held on by the little plastic clips, you will need to label up the wires though to get them back correctly.

IMHO Hornby have designed this board in complete contravention of the nmra standard and should be offering to replace the decoders of everyone who plugged one in and damaged it. The correct use of pin 7 is clearly defined in the standard and an electronics designer should know positive from negative, not to mention that it should have been tested.

Modifying that board to remove the illegal (by the nmra standard) negative connection from pin 7 requires cutting the track on the back of the board, easily done yourself with a needle file. It will be interesting to see if Hornby do that or simply opt for relabelling pin

It is equally incorrect for pin 3 to be connected to supply negative.

The Hornby board does nothing useful for DCC users and it would be better to remove it, but beware, the three LEDs at each end are wired with common negative, dcc requires common positive connection, so connecting direct to a decoder means rewiring the circuit boards in the cab as well.

Just reversing the plug as suggested by Hornby could be a disaster if you have a three function decoder with pin 3 in use. And even if not leaves yoou vulnerable to a future mistake. The best quick fix is to remove the blue wire between your decoder and pin 7 of the plug and also any wire connected to pin 3 of the plug.

Keith

Make friends in the hobby. Visit Garratt photos for the big steam lovers.

But at least the board isn't "sparse"

Hmm, isn't it unacceptable for the purchaser of a new locomotive to be expected to remove the body of theor new purchase? On that scale I wonder where taking it to bits and posting parts of it back to the manufacturer comes?

"P Morgan" responded to Hornby's comments

It's the *a replacement will be despatched when available* bit that freaks me - do they mean days, weeks or months?

John.

Anyone who doesn't remove the body will not have any problem with fitting the decoder! Keith Make friends in the hobby. Visit Garratt photos for the big steam lovers.

What do you think you are doing to it when you go and fit a DCC chip then ?!..

I wonder if this could be classed as faulty goods? If so, then a customer is entilted to return the loco, not the board, to their dealer for exchange or repair.

Pete