Want to see a sad couple of photos? Click below! I connected my Intellibox backwards. 18VAC to the output stage! YOW! Dumb, dumb, dumb. I let the smoke out, that's for sure.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/coxtthomas/



Tommy

Sorry.....

the *&*&*& Flickr application doesn't earmark the entire string....

Just append the last 4 characters to the link.

Tommy

I'm sorry..... I'll fix this link.... the pictures are exquisitely painful to look at....

My Intellibox is quite old. The very first iteration, I believe. The date code on the ST transistors indicates 1998.

Interestingly enough, these can be purchased at a reasonable price from ebay.de. (If I can't resuscitate mine).

I don't need anything more powerful. I just like to run my Marklin DCC and Motorola trains with my iPod touch.

Regards,
Tommy

Okay, this one should do the trick.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/coxtthomas/

sh.......t..... ugly pictures...... hope you can fix it

Greetings, Coookie,

Thanks for such a nice letter of encouragement! You should know that I am WELL aware of the fact that this happened to you last year, and it made a deep impression on me. So much so that I mentally filed away all your documentation at the time, knowing that someday I would need it.
And sure enough... it came to pass.

I have done very tiny soldering work before - for example on an ESU Lokpilot board! So I'm confident that, armed with your instructions, and Peter's, via J.J. , I could replace the transistors. As luck would have it though, my best buddy here is an electrical engineeer and he's looking forward to this little project as a diversion from his job in the university's computer science department.

But... I gotta ask........

Why , oh why such a poorly designed, poorly labeled connector on the IB? It's so incredibly easy to short it out - one time for me, it was a wire "whisker".

Otherwise, the IB has been a marvel of engineering, at least in my own humble opinion. I think I bought mine around 1999 or so. What's amazing to me is how Andrea S., et. al. future-proofed this device so well. They were waaay ahead of their time, imho. I had no spare dough in those days, since I was raising boy and girl twins, but years and years later, I finally got around to using the many features, i.e. the multi-protocol capabilities, the serial port for computer control, and the loco net for iPod Touch/JMRI control. But at least 10 years had gone by, practically a Mezozoic or Pleistoceine age.

Your idea on a quick-replace socket is an EXCELLENT ONE! I'll have to suggest that to my friend. But also.... what about the possiblity of some in-line, fast acting fuses to protect this output stage?

Oh..... I gotta ask you to either affirm or quash a story I heard about New Zealanders, a long time ago. I read that they were among the few people on earth that still liked Americans. You obviously harbor no anti-Yanqui sentiments, but what about New Zealanders in general??

Thanks again for the encouragement,
Tom

That would have been CVN-65, the USS Enterprise, the 'Big E', which visited Wellington in September 1964. I don't think any other American aircraft carrier has ever visited NZ.

Hi Tommy,

Bad luck . If you can't fix it cheaply and decide to replace it, which I understand you can on ebay for a very reasonable price, bear in mind, you can get a CS1 fairly reasonably too. There was even a CS1-R went quite cheaply, albeit about 3 times the price of a cheap IB recently on ebay.UK The connections on the modern thingys are a bit more idiot proof

Yes in NZ we specialize in friendly US relations, I'm named after a certain US Marine killed in Guadal Canal in WWII.

We seem to do OK with relations in the US when we're there too. For two pins I'm trying not to buy an Air NZ ticket to San Francisco next week to attend Euro West, great fun Train Show, then Vegas and then my relations in Seattle,,,,,,,,,, however, did that last year, and must remember that I want to go to the Marklin Days and around Germany, Switzerland and France next year !!!!

Hi Tom,

I agree with Fred, it just might still work. The power transistors probably survived, according to the specs of that type, they can take up to a 100 V. However, it looks like a couple of small resistors, the ones with 1R0 on them, got very hot. Most likely these resistors are meant to limit the power output of the booster and are probably connected to 2 other small transistors functioning as short circuit protection. These resistors or the transistors they are connected to, may not have survived, which means they either shorted out or are permanently open circuit. If they shorted out, the booster won´t work at all but if they are open circuit, it will work but without any short circuit protection. In which case you have to be very careful not to produce a short, not even when putting a loco or a carriage on the track because that might not only damage the Intellibox beyond repair (it isn´t now) but might also damage loco decoders etc.

Ps: I am not really familiar with the internals of the Intellibox as such but looking at your pictures it looks like a fairly straightforward and rather common booster design, although I may be wrong with that assumption. Anyway the above comment is based on such a design.

Good luck, Robert

Bon Jour, Fred, Guten Tag, Robert, Hi, Steve, Hi, Glen, and Hello to other helpful forum members,

Good news and bad news! The good news is that my IB will at least power on. I really didn't think it would, since <this> time I didn't just momentarily short the output stage, I actually sent 18VAC directly to it. Other good news, Steve, is that I have already upgraded the IB to the 1.55 free software, and best of all, I'm getting the same error message you got "ATT'N: EXTERNAL VOLTAGE".
Which leads me to agree with with Robert and Steve - the IB isn't damaged beyond repair.

Steve, I agree about "might as well replace" the transistors. I've got the box apart. The transistors are on the way, my computer science engineer friend with the fancy desoldering/soldering/vacuum bench is eager to install them for me, and he works in the building next to me! And of course, at 96 cents each, the transistors aren't exactly a big expense. (I got several of each)

A side point - a helpful member from another forum said these 2 transistors might be Darlingtons, but the data sheet says PNP.

Steve -here's a bit of humor for you: You mentioned installing the software via serial cable, right? Well, since I like to hold on to things that I might need to one day ward off obsolescence, I was able to install that software using an 9 pin to 9 pin serial cable, a 3.5 in floppy onto which I'd downloaded the software, and an old IBM computer with a serial port. Eventually I bit the bullet and got a loconet usb to serial converter so i could run things with the iPod, but I had to grin at the fact that the "golden oldies" still worked perfectly.

Speaking of old....all this happened to me because I FORGOT to triple check the connections on that tiny wire capture device. 5 years ago, I wouldn't have forgotten, because I knew it presented a hazard. So.... my advice to y'all .... get ready for the days when you're going to have to write lots of reminders to yourself.

I <could> use this all as an excuse to buy a new central station from ebay.de, maybe a CS, but what the hey, I'm kind of fond of the IB. I'd rather have a new ESU XL v4 decoder and maybe another Faulhaber motor.

Newark Electronics sez the transistors will ship tomorrow from one state over, so I should have 'em by Tues, and installed by Wednesday. I'll let
y'all know what happens.

Stay young, (my advice)
Tom

They are not really boosters in the conventional sense.. A better term would be "repeater"... They take the digital signal from the central control unit and repeat the signal on the new power feed... All the "power" still comes from the second transformer that the "booster" allows you to connect to the other part of the layout..

it's the same for me.
I can understand electricity as energy, but I have difficulty understanding the concept of electricity as power mixed with communication. I can understand the energy concept. I can understand the separate concept of communication, the conveying of a coded signal untill a receiver, but I do not understand how it can be both at the same time : how it works, what component does what, etc...etc ... Many questions... ......

Hi,
It was the same for me - understanding how DCC imparted communications - and I was determined to find out. This was a long time ago. I finally found a book published by Digitrax, now out of print and somewhat of a classic, that explained it VISUALLY!!! I'll find that book and send out its name. It is the best thing I've ever read about DCC.

After I grasped the concept, I enjoyed the world of DCC more. I learned how to use my IB with either Marklin or ESU decoders; I learned how to use a Mac or PC computer to run the Inteillibox and therefore the trains; I learned how to use a program called JMRI to more easily program the ridiculously complicated CV's into an ESU decoder; and finally I learned how to use my cheap iPod Touch to run the trains!

But first..... I had to UNDERSTAND!!!!!

Regards,
Tom

Hi, Fred,

I'm confused. In your last message regarding boosters, you said

.........Here the signal to boost is far from weak or noisy.......

which leads me to ask the following: If the signal on the opposite side of a huge digital layout is far from weak, if it has not lost any strength, then why does anyone need a booster to amplify a signal which is far from weak?

What component of the entire signal is becoming weak, such that a booster or amplifier or repeater is needed?

I understand that there is no superimposition. Only power.

Thanks for persisiting in trying to explain this to me.

One thing that would help me is: What are the EXACT components of a booster? A power transformer? If so, from what source does it derive its power? From the mains? Or from the central unit?

Is it accurate to say that a booster is simply another central unit but without any buttons for inputting commands?

Regards,
Tom

A booster as it is called in the model railroad terms is required as a model railroad grows and the power demands of all digital components (decoders, digital modules for operating the layout, etc) increases. When the power demands are greater than what a booster or central unit can supply, then the digital devices (locomotives, digital turnouts, etc) perform poorly or overload protection circuitry activates and power is turned off to the layout.

By isolating a layout into several sections and feeding each section by a separate booster (only one central unit can be normally connected in a layout, then boosters are required to supply the digital power to the remaining isolated sections) can more locomotives operate simultaneously on the same layout.

Boosters and central stations normally only supply about 3 to 4 amps of power for a HO type layout. This amount of power can quickly be consumed when sound, lights and smoke generators are in operation all at once. Also the power limitations are in place as a safety requirement.

Boosters are simply taking the digital information that is used to control the various digital devices and superimposing it onto the power which is being supplied from a separate transformer and then sending it out to one of the isolated sections on the layout which is connected to that particular booster.

Hope this helps in trying to understand in a simple sense of what a booster is for and basically how it operates. This is just a simple explanation which is describing really how e.g. the Marklin 6015, 6017 type boosters operate. There are more features that the newer boosters can do, but that is another explanation in itself.

Regards Matthew

Thanks
slowly, I'm making progress...I think.

Is " Digital Signal processor " another name for the "TFP" (Track Format Processor) - in German : GFP - which is regularly updated on the CS2 (actually the TFP/GFP is version 2.0) ?
Or is the TFP (GFP) something different ? (something different between the track and the booster or part of the booster ?)

Hi Tom, sorry for slow reply.

I didn't encounter any problems like that because I have not had to do what you are doing. Mine may indeed have as-yet-undiscovered problems lurking within.

Is there an option to restore the IB to full factory defaults?, may be worth trying that just to give everything a clean reset.

Failing that, perhaps a message to the IBX group with that specific problem may get some suggestions.

Cheers

Steve

Edited by user 17 July 2018 04:15:21(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified