What's somewhat frightening is they felt the need to use a full size through-hole voltage regulator AND felt it needed a heat sink. Isn't this an HO decoder? The only decoders I've ever seen like that were for O and large, 4 amp plus.Every HO and smaller decoder I've seen has a simple SMT regulator and no extra heat sink required.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Saw that coming
Cleo, before commenting all you have to do is read the person's old posts to see if he/she knows what they're talking about. And no Dave, i'm not calling you a Heshee
Springfield PA
Man your as thick as a brick, I can see this post is going to get locked so let me speak my piece. Not defending David B, as he of all people here is more then capable of firing back enough salvo's to sink a battle ship of comments but do you even bother to read his entire post and not just skim over the highlights? He like myself have no qualms regarding MRC's command stations aka DCC system but rather with their obviously substandard decoders. Do us all a favor and search the archives of posts and see how many negative comments are posted about Digitrax, NCE, TCS,Lenze or another other dcc decoder on the market. I will venture to say little or none. The reason why MRC is such an easy target for negative feedback and justifiably so is that they make complete and utter garbage. Maybe the fact that you have only 33 or shall I say now 35 or 36 posts it's reflective in the fact that either you haven't been here that long nor have you bothered to read many of the posts regarding MRC decoders. It's a simple fact that if so many people who have no affiliation with each other all come up with the same conclusion that there has to be a strong foundation to support their argument. If you READ the post you will see that it's not bashing but rather people voicing their angry opinion for getting ripped off by a company who makes, obviously far fetched and ridiculous claims. If you don't want to believe the members of this board and live in ignorant bliss thinking MRC is the be all to end all when it comes to DCC system of choice then be happy in your blindness. If you really want to find out form people who really know check out some of the more well accomplished model railroad builders or large clubs in the country and see what they run. Here in NJ we have "The Model Railroad Club" of Union NJ one of the largest club layouts in the country they run Digitrax, Ken McCorry's Conrail layout possibly one of the largest home layouts in the country, Ken runs NCE Howard Zane, and Tony Koester both run NCE and I could keep going on and on. So if that doesn't tell you something then maybe it's not worth the effort to try and explain to you. There is no question MRC systems are ok but have a great number of limitations you can argue that fact to the cows come home but facts are facts and facts are what win debates.
Ken runs NCE, not MRC. I don't think Tony or Howard run MRC either.
All that from someone who was the proud owner of a Bachman EZ Command no later than March 24 2010.
Jack W.
cleo3This whole post was supposed to be about the Prodigy Squared system. So why is it that you and David B keep slamming people because you don't like MRC decoders? My issue is the fact that anytime someone has a different OPINION than you or David B they get slammed. Believe me, we all know how you feel about MRC by now!!!
I'm not a DCC user yet, so I have no axe to grind - other than some disappointment with MRC's proprietary attitude to their high end DC products. As an electrical engineer, these sorts of things interest me, so I have investigated DCC systems both on line and at my LHS.
Cleo, you started off with how you love your PA2 system, claiming it was reliable and otherwise great. How do you know it's reliable? From a statistic of one? Based on reports in various forums (the best measure of reliability stats I have so far), I would say PA2 is indeed on a par with the other systems for reliability. There are some reported failures, but the numbers seem to be reasonable for any of the major systems.
Any failure is a severe disappointment to the individual making a significant purchase. From the corporate perspective, it is often considered "good enough" to have a percentage rate failure about the same as your competitors. That may be OK when you are selling millions of an electronic widget, but it doesn't work so well when you are selling well under 10K DCC units to guys who will vent their unhappiness to other model railroaders. Then, how the irate customer is handled is everything, much more powerful than advertising. Ask BLI, Blackstone, and Bachmann how they know this. And even they have lost customers and gotten bad word of mouth when they failed to make the customer with the defective locomotive happy.
But you have taken the thin-skinned approach to any criticism of MRC. And I didn't know you were entitled to control a thread just because you made the 1st post.
When I consider a major electronics purchase - $50 or more to me - I prefer to read reviews first. I usually only focus on the negative reviews, as they generally provide more useful information. A single negative review doesn't bother me, but a pattern or common point of complaints gets my attention fast. If many users have the same complaint, there is a good chance I will experience the same issue.
I, for one, do appreciate David B and other comments from actual users of various DCC components. David is a professional installer who has to stand behind his work even when the end user messes things up through ignorance or negligence. Hence, ultra-reliability of his installations is critical. Because I may value other features or points above ultra-reliability, I may choose differently than he would suggest. Regardless, I listen and read what others have to say about MRC products.
So when David and others show through numbers of complaints that MRC DCC decoders have a high failure rate out of the box, tend to fail early when they do work, and suffer from lack of attention in engineering and workmanship, I listen. When I realize that MRC is ignoring the chorus of complaints, and apparently not making any real product improvements, I realize I probably don't want an MRC DCC decoder.
But you only wanted to talk about the control side.
On the PA and PA2 front, there are many MRC believers from DC days that want MRC to succeed in DCC. The PA and PA2 were/are competitive DCC control systems. And they might have been superior had MRC cooperated with JMRI with their computer interface. Unfortunately, they have chosen the proprietary route which gives MRC a software maintenance headache. They can't possibly expend the resources that the volunteers at JMRI do to track down and program the specs on every single decoder, especially over the long term. So the computer interface will always be inferior to JMRI/Decoder Pro. (FWIW, a similar situation is occurring in track planning software. Regardless of what you think about the individual programs, the volunteers at XtrkCad do a better job of updating track libraries than any of the commercial products can afford to do.) And because the JMRI source code is open, it won't die when a given manufacturer decides to pull the plug.
As others have suggested, if you want to open a cheering section for MRC to justify your purchase of their equipment, the Yahoo Group is probably more appropriate. This forum appears to have gotten tired of posters that say, "I love my XXXX" without any reasoning or supporting rationale for their choice. Yes, I wince at the assumption that only Digitrax and NCE matter in the DCC world. There are at least 5 other manufacturers out there - Zimo, Bachmann, MRC, CVP, and Lenz - all of which make capable systems with both good and not-so-good points.
Obviously, I'm prejudiced towards open source and common standards. MRC favors the opposite direction, and has done so for decades. I tend to be attracted to manufacturers that are very forthcoming about how their product is designed, and how to use it and maintain it. It puts those guys one leg up on the competition when it comes to my purchasing dollar. So Lenz, CVP, NCE, and especially Digitrax start out quite high on my list. MRC, Bachmann, and Zimo start out lower. Just like Sony starts out low on my list due to their design arrogance and insistence on proprietary solutions. Other features can overcome the initial positioning, but that's my starting point.
enough of my soapbox
Fred W
Well Cleo, as you can see, passions run high on this subject and if nothing else you can see the magnitude of the PR problem that MRC faces.
MRC, one of the most respected names in the industry just a few short years ago, through miss-step after miss-step, horrendous quality control and some in-your-face advertising has reached the point where the company is reviled by many modellers. There are many now who simply don't take the company seriously and most certainly don't consider them a leader in DCC.
Santa Fe all the way's attempt to have a users meeting was of course well intended, but feelings run high. There is a sense of utter incredulity that MRC would shun the use of the most respected and utilized computer application for DCC programming and control. It smacks of utter arrogance again on the part of the company and further fans the flames of anti-MRC sentiment.
Do a search on the forum, you will be very hard pressed to find any genuine criticism of the Prodigy Sq command station. Most freely acknowledge the fact that it is an easy to use, apparently reliable, well priced system, backed by little in the way of web resource and improving telephone support. But you can't easily separate the product from the company. This thread was an attempt to discuss the system in isolation without any of the other factors that determine reputation. As you can see, this is a very hard thing to do.
Simon Modelling CB&Q and Wabash See my slowly evolving layout on my picturetrail site http://www.picturetrail.com/simontrains and our videos at http://www.youtube.com/user/MrCrispybake?feature=mhum
rrinker Ken runs NCE, not MRC. I don't think Tony or Howard run MRC either. --Randy
Cleo3,
I have great respect for you for your service in Viet Nam. Thanks to you and many others for their service then and now.
I think some on this thread have confused you with the original poster of this thread. But, nevertheless, the OP asked for comments from "happy" PA2 users. It's unfortunate that some had to ignore that request and start the negativism. I can understand why this may have ticked you off, as it did with me, but sometimes there are smoother ways to handle such situations, especially in a public forum.
Anyway, I hope that we can get back to the original purpose of this thread.
Jerry
Rio Grande vs. Santa Fe.....the battle is over but the glory remains!