I have to install numerous peco two wire solenoid motors.I have followed the directions in the digitrax big book of Dcc.I have double checked the programming of the ds54,and external power has been supplied to the ds54. Nove of the peco motors will work.I have had no problem installing my tortoise motors,so the ds54's are not at fault.Even with tortoises and peco motors on the same ds54 only the stall motor will work. Could anyone give me some assistance?

-- Stewart Kidd (sjkidd@camtech.net.au), November 26, 2000

Answers

Stewart,

This is a bit of a mystery especially if you ahve your programming correct. However, after reading the DS54 manual 2 things come to mind. One is so basic, I even hate to mention it, but, have you connected one side of each coil on the PECO machine together for the common lead to the DS54 output?

The other has to do with the cables you are using for the output of the DS54. Secton 4 in the manual describes using 4 wire telephone cables and has a drawing and description of the wire colors and position in the cable. However, telephone cables flip the wires between the two ends. If you hold both ends of a cable so the connectors are facing the same way, you will notice the order on one end is from left to right as described in the manual, that is Yellow, Green, Red and Black but the order on the other end is opposite, that is Black, Red, Green and Yellow. Now if you used telephone cables and cut them as described in the manual only half of them will have the Green wire in the correct position when you plug the cable into the DS54 socket. If you happpen to pick the wrong half for your testing then your Peco machine will not work!!

I find figure 2 very confusing - I am not sure what you are looking at, whether it is the end of the cable or the socket on the DS54 (I don't have a DS54 to reference). However, examing other diagrams I am pretty sure that if you orient the DS54 so it looks like Figure 3, then the Yellow lead is toward the bottom of the figure. In other words, the wire colors for connector D from top to bottom would be Black, Red, Green and Yellow. If you got the "wrong half of the cable" you can still connect the switch machine with it but you have to substitute using the Red wire for the Green and it will work backwards to what you expect - that is Black will be the "Thrown" lead and Yellow will be the "Closed" lead.

Not sure whether I have helped or confused you.

Dale Gloer

-- Dale Gloer (dgloer@ca.ibm.com), November 27, 2000.