Odd RailSounds 5 Board Failure

Probably a processor you couldn't replace/program anyway.  I thought those blank boards cost as much as the Chip version.  So ordering the RS5.0 gets you a spare chip for the same cost.  I am sure Talk to Lionel would give you the part # for the blank if that is cheaper.   G

The difference is I have to send back the old board, so I end up paying more for the one with the chips.  The failures I've seen with this have all been the board and not the chips, so I just like to keep a spare board around.  I just can't find the number again, driving me crazy!

  691-RS50-C00,  

John, we have them.

Bill

I probably got it from you last time Bill.

John, on RS5 the audio board does that job.  That carried over to Legacy with the modular boards. They did away with the IR decoder board.  Bill put out the correct number you need.

I realize that Marty, I was curious about the type of failure.  I had communication, but only the steam idle sounds and chuff didn't work.  Whistle, bell, and crew-talk all worked fine over the IR link.  I have just never seen one fail in that fashion, and I was curious if anyone else had seen it.  When the chuff failed, I first started chasing the chuff switch, but then I realized that the smoke was chuffing away properly, obviously the switch was working.

It's obviously the physical RS5 board as the chips are working fine in another RS5 board, and that board fails with a different set of RS5 audio chips in the same way.

Very strange...

I know you did all the resets.  I ran into one on a RS5 Hiawatha and AUX-1 then 3 got me going.  Makes no sense.

Well, I confess I didn't try ALT1-3, that one didn't come up.   I did reset is as a diesel and a steamer, and it didn't make any difference.

The older railsounds boards had a RS/SS switch, where the SS position would allow bell and whistle but not engine sounds. I do not know whether this applies to RS5, and I would have thought crewtalk would be suppressed in the SS position, but you might check whether this unit is set to SS.

No switch in sight, but I have another board now.

John, this sounds as though the "blended" or background sounds are turned all the way off. In current product, this is controlled by cab remote volume button presses. As TWolf correctly mentioned, in older product there was a physical switch that turned off most everything except whistle and bell (trivia alert:  the Railsounds team always called this the "Kughn switch," because he originally requested the feature).

I can't recall if the RS5.0-era product still had the switch. But I'd bet money that the cause of the unusual failure is related to the fact these two sets of sounds are grouped into two separate sets, and the sound system, for whatever reason, thinks it is doing as directed and playing only the user triggered "foreground" sounds.

It's certainly odd.  In any case, that board is labeled and in the box.  If I ever need a sound board without chuffing, I have one.

I think he is implying that you need to do what Marty stated and use the AUX-1 3.  G

I did that, no change.

I'm not suggesting a solution, as John has tried everything. Just an educated guess as to why some sounds went away and others didn't.

Yep, I figured it was time to move on, it was the oddest failure I've seen.  Typically, the few RS boards that I've had fail were just dead or static generators.  That's what happened to my last bad RS board, whenever I put chips into it, it would just sound like a thunderstorm.

Thanks for responding Rudy, if this is the worst failure I have, I'll consider myself lucky.