Hi all,

I have been using a combination of old kit that includes the 6051 interface and 6020 controller over the course of past few months to successfully implement automation with a few sensors and an s88 using Rocrail running on an old Mac Mini. Communication has to date been reliant on a USB to serial adapter using a Prolific based chip, which has served well but has been causing intermittent CTS errors after roughly 30mins of continuous automated operation which eventually cause some commands to be missed and the connection with the controller to be dropped.

To this end, I purchased a Waveshare USB to Serial device that seems to be using a genuine FTDI chip in the hope of creating a more stable serial connection to the 6051. I can see the device as a port in MacOs and can successfully transmit using screen, but I am now not able to establish a connection with the controller at all via Rocrail, as I has been the case in the past. I get a CTS error reported every minute and no commands are sent to the track. I have tried to add the rtsdisable=true flag in the rocrail.ini file and disabled hardware flow control but there hasn't been any improvement.

Switching back to the Prolific USB to Serial causes the same behaviour, where communication is established but not 100% stable.

Based on research, there have been suggestions that point to binding the CTS and RTS pins using a null modem, but I was wondering whether there is something is software that is less invasive that could be attempted.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Hi
Here a Rocrail user with a CS3
Sorry for my answer as you will not like it
With the 6051 the max speed is 9600 bauds which is very slow for Rocrail
Any signal stuttering will send an avalanche of messages any in case of overflow Rocrail will require a reboot
In the meantime make sure rails and wheels are very clean to keep the exchange of messages to a low level
Initially the 6051 was planned for use with Basic with very few exchanges
Cheers
Jean