I bought one at York and a bag of batteries for under $100.00. I was a little concerned about digging into an electronic board and swapping a chip. I found it to be very easy and became fun to do once I got the hang of it.
I have 8 engines that were non funtional and I didn’t want to, or couldn’t upgrade them to PS2. I also didn’t want to give them away on Ebay. After swapping the batteries out without starting them up I found 2 worked right away with out the reset. 6 didn’t. I ran the reset process and got 4 more to work using the reset kit. 2 didn’t work and thought the chips were blown. I talked to others and found out to test that chip swap it with another one and see if the engine works, I did and the engines still didn’t work,not a chip problem. I have done PS2 upgrades and had afew PS1 boards laying around. I was going to swap out the boards but…
As I was getting ready to pull the engines off the track I noted that the white socket on the QSI board was loose. I wiggled it and got that engine to work. The tell tale sign I got was the engine made all of the proper sounds but wouldn’t move. I resetted the socket and now it works.
The last unit I looked at had the white and red sockets were loose. The engine lights up and won’t make any sounds or work. I pushed on them and it started up and started working properly. Then the red socket fell off and I didn’t want to try and solder it back on and quickly swapped out the board with one of my spares and swapped chips and now it works great.
8 for 8 not bad for under $100.00 and one night of “workin on the railroad”
I would have never tried this but the kit makes it real easy to do. Simple easy to follow instructions. It took a little practice on the first one but you get the hang of it real quick. I bent the fingers on one chip because the chip puller can reach them and bend them if your not carefull. I just bent them back. To avoid this easly rock the chip back and forth. It’s almost as easy