A surprise from MTH

Thanks for posting!

"WOW" MTH boards have problems?????? who would have thought that. LOL You betcha.........Nice to see Manufactures share fix details for the common folk.

As said before by others, Thanks for sharing. I will tell my friend of this, he will surely be calling them ASAP.

Merry Xmas

Good to know..my PS3's guilty of occasional false start(cycle tiu off and back on takes care of it) but have been very stable in my multi power trains.I have done harness over caps and wires away from signal gen but any new tips and tweaks will be helpful.

MTH has only shared this information with authorized service techs. Not public information or for the so called common folk

Really???? I'm sorry to hear that !!!!!

WOW!!!.

maybe it is not our layout!

I was a bit surprised to get that, but it's a welcome document.  Like Chuck says, it may allow us to save folks money.

Common guys, the service tech also had a similar document for PS-2 boards.  Showed components and potential parts to replace for specific symptoms.  It is in chapter 4.  Read your service  manual.  Never got to the level I took it, but it took me over a year documenting symptoms to failure points.

While I have salvaged a few boards for lights, smoke, speed control, and diesel motor function.  Some of those other chips are not going to be serviceable with your routine solder station.  You might also fine that those fault get other unidentified components or traces.  Unfortunately modern micro electronics just are not as reworkable by the hobbyist unless you have access to professional rework station.  G

Well gosh George, I think we knew that we had that information for the PS/2 boards.   However, we hadn't seen anything for the PS/3 boards until now.

I was happy to receive this as well!

gunrunnerjohn posted:

Well gosh George, I think we knew that we had that information for the PS/2 boards.   However, we hadn't seen anything for the PS/3 boards until now.

Well gosh it is not clear that everyone knew that, making it sound like this is the first release of board info period! G

Since the info was only released to techs, I assumed that that audience knew of Chapter 4 in the ASC manual.

Hopefully some tech people can save you a buck.   That is info for the tech guys only.    Many of us spend time in the tech only section on the MTH site.   Some boards can be saved and some can not.  When I see an engine with a bad board, I am more concerned with finding out what the cause was that took out the board.   Not a smart idea to just throw in a new board and hope for the best.  Jason Wenzel at MTH is doing a great job in assisting the tech guys with all the information they should be armed with.

Things are getting better with MTH boards and Lionel has the good RCMC board system on the high end locomotives.   MTH has constantly used the same board in Premier as they do in the lower end locomotives.   This has been a great help for tech guys.

Anyone willing to at least give a hint to those who are not MTH trained? Does this info require replacing parts not up to the job or engineering fixes that involve adding components? I have 3 PS3 upgrade kits still unopened, early issue and at least 5 PS3 engines. Closest MTH guy is 100 miles from me. FWIW, I do know what end of the soldering iron to grab.

Pete

This info is component level board repair for surface mount components. If you dont know which end of the soldering iron to grab you have no need for this information.

Matt Makens posted:

This info is component level board repair for surface mount components. If you dont know which end of the soldering iron to grab you have no need for this information.

Actually I said I do which end to grab and have been designing surface mount stuff for many years. I was repairing Lionel boards at component level long before I went to Lionel training.

Just hoping not to have to reverse engineer these boards if I can help it.

Pete