Legacy Upgrades

I don't know of any reason not to leave the module in there, OTOH, I store mine away until I need them for upgrades.  I keep a pair of the loaded with the latest version for the CAB2 and BASE for anyone that shows up at the club to update their units.

To do an upgrade you WILL have to get to the channel select button on the bottom of the base to make the upgrade happen so I don't see any reason to leave a black module in there if you have to get to the base anyways. 

And you will have to make a CAB2 module burn at some point when doing upgrades as well and it will have to be removed to upgrade the handheld.

Thanks Marty and gunrunner.

Guess I'll buy into their annuity stream and buy the modules from them unless someone gets entrepreneurial and develops a secondary market and offers the modules with updates at half the price. 

That said, feel compelled to rant.

Got to be the stupidest design and most user unfriendly product in this millenium.

Disconnect the serial cable, disconnect a Common wire, thru a tab hole mind you, disconnect the other end of the Y cable from what it is attached to, potentially a Booster needed because they poorly designed the volt/amp outputs they used, etc etc, put a recharge on/off switch on the under side - not documented any where and if it isn't in the off position and you use regular batteries, poof goes the recharge capability.

Bad day on the Chesapeake 

Ralph

Did you ever take a gander at my thread about making your own from your now useless blue modules?

Free Black Modules for Legacy

Hi Gunrunner

Yes I had read that thread already.  You did a remarkable piece of work. In this solution, you are still required to remove the base and set the channel button, for whatever silliness Lionel built into the operation. A very poor design in my opinion and YOU would never have implemented something so silly with all of the downstream implications associated with removing a base from its layout connections. I terminated employment for designers who presented such ill conceived implementations. TTT -- Think Things Through.  They don't have it.

I opted for an alternative strategy, which turns out to be unworkable - at least for me. So is the world of IT. Some days you eat the bear, some days the bear eats you. 

But maybe this was the stratagem all along. Make it difficult to do a download and create a cash cow. 

Become the entrepreneur.

Ralph

Can't please everyone I guess. 

Whats a $20 module compared to a $500 or $1000 locomotive. Secondly, as long as you have  version1.3, which Lionel has sent out modules free of charge, it isn't imperative that you ever upgrade.

All of these people with "better ideas" you would think we would have more than two control systems to choose from

I think Ralph is objecting to the fact that you have to have access directly to the base to update it.

Got that. 

Ralph,

There is a simple Solution!!  Buy a second cord and leave it plugged into your Computer for the next DOWNLOAD. That's what I did. That way you don't have to move cords around and such. A very SIMPLE Solution and not costly!!!

Fredstrains

IMO the upgrade from the internet was not originally the way Lionel was going to do the upgrades. but things change.

Thanks Guys, first for reading my rant.

Fred: That is what I was hoping to do. I have the cables, but as Marty has pointed out, I'll have to remove and lift the base to get at the channel selector on the underside of the base.  So the extra cables become moot.

I realize you can't please everyone, but Lionel doesn't have a responsibility to think about their designs.

On to Plan Six. I'll figure out another place in the room for the Legacy base and the TMCC base and extra long wires from them to my nice, neat, out of the way power center.

I'll rant more later with how I do.

Ralph

You could come up with a solenoid to push the channel select button.

Gunrunner,

Not sure how this solenoid would work.

I don't want to take your time or the forums for that matter, but if you can explain to me here or in an email, love to know other possibilities... Sort of a plan 7

ralph

Sounds like a lot of work to eliminate a few minutes of inconvenience maybe once every year and a half.  But I don't know your setup so maybe I am off base.

I was only half serious.  I'd probably just make sure I could access the Legacy base, renders this whole conversation moot.

I'm sure you can rig something up to push a button, that's not all that difficult.  However, you also have to take the module out to upgrade the remote with it, so you still have to have access to the back of the base.