Anyone recognise this?

PhilP

PhilP

G Scale, 7/8th's, Electronics
Country flag
Hello all..

I have just removed this from (I think) the remains of an Aristocraft RS3..

DSC01458.JPG

DSC01459.JPG

I think it must be a sound card:
Battery backup.
What appear to be reed switches for triggers.
Two controls were brought out of the side of the tank it was mounted in . - under loco.
No speaker installed.
No makers mark I can see.. - Copyright 199? and a designation S4004 are all I see on the board..

Anyone recognise it?

TIA,
PhilP.
 
It is one of the old PH Hobbies sound cards that Aristocraft included with special orders.
PH stood for Paul Housey who was PH Hobbies.
It is not a good one but to be fair it was a very early sound card.
Here is some info of the S3005 card

http://www.girr.org/girr/tips/tips11/ph_hobbies_tips.html
 
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I see no link, or information, but thanks Mike..
Gives me something to go on for a start..
 
That's pretty cool, I'm making a pictoral collection of these boards, he made dozens of different designs.

I see you have 2 reed switches, (probably bell and horn), a small encapsulated battery (stack of nicad coin cells) and power and speaker.

Note well what is connected to what, it may be hard to find a manual/pinout. It will probably work, looks like a couple of volume controls on it.

Greg
 
Greg Elmassian said:
That's pretty cool, I'm making a pictoral collection of these boards, he made dozens of different designs.

I see you have 2 reed switches, (probably bell and horn), a small encapsulated battery (stack of nicad coin cells) and power and speaker.

Note well what is connected to what, it may be hard to find a manual/pinout. It will probably work, looks like a couple of volume controls on it.

Greg
Click to expand...

Actually three reeds. - Brown wires. On set have come away from the connector.
Red and black (top left) seem to be power.
Yellow and black (top right) go via an inductor to the battery..

There are three header pins above the power connector. - There was nothing on these.
There appear to be three header pins at the bottom of the board.. These have wires/headers on them. ?might be configuration settings?

There was no speaker, or apparently any wiring for a speaker.


Am not at home, but the loco has had the running boards/walkways cutoff, and the whole thing over-sprayed what I can only call British Racing Green!
Looks like a stretched ?teddy bear? I think they were called??
 
PhilP said:
Hello all..

I have just removed this from (I think) the remains of an Aristocraft RS3..

View attachment 227364

View attachment 227365

I think it must be a sound card:
Battery backup.
What appear to be reed switches for triggers.
Two controls were brought out of the side of the tank it was mounted in . - under loco.
No speaker installed.
No makers mark I can see.. - Copyright 199? and a designation S4004 are all I see on the board..

Anyone recognise it?

TIA,
PhilP.
Click to expand...
To be honest I'm surprised you've not been arrested by the Internet Police with that picture! I can only assume it doesn't tick!
 
Paul M said:
To be honest I'm surprised you've not been arrested by the Internet Police with that picture! I can only assume it doesn't tick!
Click to expand...

I wondered why the people three doors either way had left their properties!
:giggle::giggle::giggle:

Only a problem if I had photographed it in a shoe!
(showing my age..)
 
Thanks Mike..

Looks like one of the earliest boards..
Will have to stick a speaker on it and see if it still works. - I wonder if the NiCad's are any good?
 
PhilP said:
Thanks Mike..

Looks like one of the earliest boards..
Will have to stick a speaker on it and see if it still works. - I wonder if the NiCad's are any good?
Click to expand...


I had one of the PH Hobies boards that came in a USAT NW2 a good few years back..... It worked but it was very 'hissy', good for a steamer but not so for a dismal.
I replaced it with a Soundtraxx Sierra board which then had to go when I DCC-ed the loco (Sierras do not like PWC and there isn't much room to add a linear converter inside the hood).

Good luck with the nicads they must be real old by now!
 
Yes, you did notice that George's article has 2 boards, the steam board, which appears to be an S3005, in fact a slightly different version OEM'd to Aristo.

The diesel board in his article is very close to your S4004, although it appears that the Aristo unit is an R5005, there are some slight differences between the 2 boards. Interestingly your board has the second volume control for the second speaker.

The Aristo manual linked in George's site may be close enough.

Greg
 
An update:
It is a version of the earlier board..

It also works!

Three reeds fire horn, bell, and 'chatter' (quite a conversation, actually).
Considering, its' age.. I reckon it isn't bad.
There is very little variation in 'revs' that I can make out. - Have not played with the 'chuff' wire to see if it affects this.

The wiring is 'vintage' and very stiff.

The NiCad's were very flat, but having had it running in the background for 15-20 minutes, they made a slight effort as the power was turned down. - Manual does say charge them for 12 hours, or so..
Not bad for near-on 20 year old rechargeables!
 
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