Isn’t the plug the raised piece right in the center of the circuit board?
It appears to me that the socket for an eight pin plug is shown in the upper right, under where it is printed CT004.00P01.8.
I don’t know if it makes a difference, but the link you provided says it is for a S-2. I think in the original posts it was said that the loco is an S-4.
Yes. Just pull off the top part to expose the socket.
Joe
Bachmann wants 35.00 for that PCB for S2/S4 replacement.
Take Care! [:D]
Frank
“DCC ready” is a cruel joke and just a selling feature. I just bought two Bachmann GP38-2s, that are “DCC Ready”. Sure, they have the 8 pin socket, but not much room for anything on top of the motor, except maybe a small silent decoder. The frame weight is two piece, and the top piece has no holes in it. So a speaker firing down will not be heard. And the fan grills are not see through, so a speaker firing up in the back will also not be heard.Not much room in the cab for a speaker either. And not much room for a sound decoder on top of the factory light board. So, it looks like I’m going to be doing some or maybe a lot of grinding on the weights and doing a hard wire job on them. Might be room for a speaker in the fuel tank area, but will require drilling a dozen small holes for the sound to get out. So it might be “DCC Ready”, but it sure ain’t DCC and sound ready! I’ve done plenty of sound installs, but frankly, I’m tired of drilling and grinding and hard wiring.
That’s a great point. Isn’t it time for manufacturers to design a loco with the space to install the decoder and sound system of your choice?
Rich
I don’t have the model in question so I will defer to others as to exactly how the circuit board is set up, but in general most Bachmann locos do have an 8 pin socket with a jumper pluged into it as shown in the photo posted somewhere above.
Plugging a decoder direcly into that plug yields a working setup, lights and all, no other mods needed.
Or, in the case of the locos labeled “DCC Onboard” by Bachmann, there is already a DCC decoder pluged into that 8 pin socket - AND the jumper is included to allow removal of the decoder for the best possible DC operation.
Why does Bachmann make locos both ways, or really two out of three possible ways?
Easy - they know how many DC users are still out there, they understand their pricing position in the market, and they understand that not all DCC users want sound.
Many people are quick to say "but the DCC decoders work
I don’t really think it’s a cruel joke. I mean, the term DCC ready seems to have been coined before sound became common, so lets be fair. Words mean things don’t they? There is no “sound” in the term “DCC ready” - it has commonly meant for years that you could plug a DCC (yes, silent) decoder into an engine and control it with a DCC system.
It’s been a relatively recent phenomenon that more and more loco’s have had provisions in them for speakers etc. And even more recently have some companies, such as Athearn, in a limited very recent number of engines provided accomodations for speakers in their older RTR chassis such as the SD45/SD40 and such.
People shouldn’t be offended when they buy a loco and find it difficult to shoe horn in sound. It’s not written somewhere that it’s a DCC right that if DCC is on the box there should be space for sound in there as well. Now if the box said DCC SOUND ready, then sure, I would agree, there should be space for a sound decoder and a speaker, absolutely - you’d have a right to accuse them of a cruel joke if there wasn’t space.
Well said.
hobo9941
“DCC ready” is a cruel joke and just a selling feature. I just bought two Bachmann GP38-2s, that are “DCC Ready”. Sure, they have the 8 pin socket, but not much room for anything on top of the motor, except maybe a small silent decoder.
So it might be “DCC Ready”, but it sure ain’t DCC and sound ready!
That’s a great point. Isn’t it time for manufacturers to design a loco with the space to install the decoder and sound system of your choice?
Well, many are now. BUT, As a DC non sound operator the last thing I want is to buy a DCC ready diesel loco who’s weight, and thereby pulling power, has been dramiticly compromised to make room for a speaker or two.
Long before they even offered it with sound, the Bachmann Berkshire had a sound ready tender - that’s fine, it makes sense to only make one tender floor no matter what DC/DCC options you offer. But if it seriously compromises loco weight - no thank you.
Sheldon
It is right in the middle of the circuit board. If you zoom in you can see that the rectangular box has 2 rows of 4 holes in it. That’s where the 8 pins go. It comes from the factory with a jumper plugged into the socket that looks like the back of a PC board.
Well, you could add weight in the empty space a lot easier than we can remove it. [:-^]
That I had to have overlooked the plug would seem obvious. This fact is irrelevnt to the topic of this thread and it needs to be understood that I was successful in converting this locomotive to DCC operation any way, although at some extra work. The little boxes that trap the wires onto the circuit board tend to fail over time, so all my connections have been soldered and will last a long time.
It seems to me that any complaint against Bachmann here is unwarranted.
The loco comes with an 8 pin plug that has the standard DC jumper pushed into it. That is the modern term for “DCC Ready”, IMO, since most producers now isolate the motor from the frame and install a circuit board with the plug. Just remove the jumper and push a decoder into the plug.
Of course, if you install a decoder that can’t be pushed into the plug, but one that must be hardwired and soldered, then the factory circuit board must be removed and resistors may have to be installed if the decoder does not support the proper lighting.
No matter what type of decoder the owner wants to install, the Bachmann S4 is DCC Ready.
Huh?
You asked “Tell me where the plug is in the exploded view provided”. I answered. How is that irrelevant?
To the employess and officers of Bachmann, please except my sincere appology for my overlooking the DCC plug on your “DCC Ready” Alco S-4 switcher!
Mark,
What can I say! [bow] [bow]
Take Care! [:D]
Frank
I’m not sure we should conclude that Bachmann is completely without fault here. For anybody that’s doing this for the first time, I’d say the odds are no better than 50/50 that they will recognize that piece of PCB as the jumper that needs to be removed.
Based of the thousands of these things they use, would it really be that big of an expense to make something that looked more like a jumper - with a label that says something like “remove for DCC”?
The instructions, while they show the socket, don’t show the jumper as a separate part. Why not at least include a picture of the jumper in the instructions and tell the user that it needs to be removed to plug in a decoder?
Exception noted.
I think maybe a quick Google search may have answered all the questions asked here concerning adding a decoder.