Breadboard circuit
After success building circuit described here on breadboard, I began construction of something more permanent this past weekend. But, as I did so, two events conspired to frustrate my efforts. First was the discovery, thanks to a member of the JNSForum, of the Lenz LF101XF function decoder, which does precisely what I designed my auxiliary circuit to do: Drive a bi-polar lighting circuit.
Even in the face of redundancy, I decided to push forward with my circuit-making, since I already had the parts. But, unknown to me, something went wrong in the construction of the permanent circuit on perfboard (I think I fried a transistor or two during soldering). So the second factor was the discovery that the circuit I’d built was rather good at releasing the magic blue smoke from my TCS FL4 decoder.
Now, my circuit is both redundant and dead. I’ll leave it on the shelf as a curiosity, I guess. The TCS FL4 is off for warranty replacement. When it comes back, I’ve got another, different, use for it. In the meantime, a Lenz LF101XF is on the way to make short work of this conversion.
So, my question is: Does anyone have suggestions for a project to justify the 50 PNP transistors I bought cheap off eBay?
Ouch. Well, if misery loves company, you’ll be happy to know that I’m going through a lot of similar, though different ‘learning experiences’ of my own! After finally installing a series of 7 LED’s in my 8 story kit-bashed Greenmax hotel, I tried to adjust an led’s position WITH the power on, and ended up creating a short and getting to enjoy the pretty little ‘blue smoke’ show for a few seconds, and then having to disassemble the whole building and start again! Ah well….this was totally stupid and self-inflicted and I should have known better.
By the way, finally found out where exactly Akihabara station is! I was fortunate to make several business trips to Japan and took the Narita Express to Shinjuku, passing right through (apparantly) your namesake station. Thanks to the internet, I was able to get some nice visuals of this (one of many) interesting areas in a fascinating city.
I don’t think the Narita Express passes through Akihabara; I think it comes in to Tokyo from the east, and then heads south—Akihabara lies just two stations north of Tokyo Station.
I really wish I had an excuse to run those great-looking N’EX sets on my diorama, though. Maybe in my fantasy version of Tokyo, they will
http://www.jreast.co.jp/e/nex/
My bad….I was looking at the rail map for Tokyo trying to trace the path of the Narita Express from the airport to Shinjuku and I followed the wrong line through Akihabara!
DO NOT ask me for directions in Japan!