TexasSP posted:I don't think it's reasonable for a 15 year old plus board to be covered under any kind of warranty or have expectation that they should all work under all conditions and usage. My main inquiry was to gauge the risk and how to approach the buy, which is summed up nicely by several posters. I will go into any of these with the expectation of having to replace.
GRJ, your knowledge is always valued as I know you have quite a bit of experience with this. When looking for electronics info I always pay attention to your posts. Not to take away from many others who post with their experience as well.
MTH and other hobbies like this in general can never know how someone uses their loco and blanket warranty for long periods. Even with MTH diagnostics of time and scale mileage only show so much. Someone could have 10 hours usage with 100 scale miles and that seems good, but if they constantly pulled 12+ car consists up 3% grades several hours per day it's likely more taxing than a loco with 500 scale miles and 80 hours usage pulling a 6 car consist across level grades for an hour per day.
IIRC here these failures have been occurring for a long time and some on near new in the box engines.
gunrunnerjohn posted
An explanation might be in order, but I don't know if one is forthcoming.
Truthfully, I'm a fan of the 3V PS/2 board as well, I've had the best luck with those. I have a PS/3 steam upgrade board that failed right out of the box, I have to see if MTH is going to replace it. I've installed probably 30-35 of the PS/2 upgrades, never had a bad board. Out of half a dozen of the PS/3 upgrades, I'm already up to two bad boards. Not a record I actually was inspired to attaining!
Before the peanut gallery chimes in, these are brand new sealed upgrade kits, and I take them out using proper static precautions. My first step is to connect them to the MTH test set and load sound files, so bad wiring is not possible, they're just bad from the get-go! That hasn't inspired confidence for me in the PS/3 system.
All our PS/2 5V units run fine. (So far:-) Your PS/3 failure rate is not confidence building John!!
