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Quantum Chip Upgrade Program Specification

Quantum Chip Upgrade

4 October 2005
Fred Severson, Gerry Pruss and Jim Christensen

Introduction: The chip upgrade program (CUP) allows Sounds-Like-Trains (SLT) to provide upgrades to all Quantum 1 locomotives. Quantum 1 (known just as “Quantum Sound” or “Quantum System”) is the product that has been sold for the last three years to BLI, Atlas, Life Like, Canadian Hobby Craft, Intermountain and other OEM importers. About 300,000 Quantum Systems will have been factory installed with software that will need upgrading. The new software with upgrade capabilities and other new features will be called Quantum1a or Q1a.

Although there have been a number of hardware designs used with factory installed Quantum equipped locomotives, all Quantum 1 systems use a 4 meg memory, 8 megahertz crystal for uP clock, the same track voltage and BEMF detector bridges, the same on-board power supply and the same QUIC-51 ASIC. Over the last three years a number of improvements have been made to the Quantum 1 System software including QARC technology and Regulated Throttle Control in Analog plus a number of improvements in DCC and DC system operation. Changes include:

DCC Improvements and changes:

  1. Added software to prevent sounds intermittently going off the air after minutes of operation. 4 September 2002.

  2. Mute Volume. Allows the sound to decrease gradually to a low volume setting made in CV 51. 24 September 2002.

  3. Labored Drift/Chuff sounds added to steam and labored motor sounds added to diesels under load (Sound-of-Power™). 24 September 2002.

  4. CV 5, V-High, added. 24 September 2002.

  5. Synchronized steam loco headlight operation to dynamo start up and shut down. 24 September 2002. Improved synchronization between headlight and Dynamo operation, 4 August 2003.

  6. Addition Functions F9 through F12 added. 15 April 2003.

  7. System Configuration Packet Timeout Shutdown added, CV 56.0. 15 April 2003.

  8. Shutdown Effects Added; Disconnect/Low Idle/Total Shut Down. 15 April 2003. Improved 6 July 2003. Improved 4 August 2003.

  9. High Voltage Software Circuit Breaker added, which prevents damage to the Quantum system and motors from some power packs high throttle settings. 4 August 2003.

  10. Optional Extended Shut Down added which allows the locomotive to shut off appliances and lights over time to better model the prototype shutdown procedure. 4 August 2003.

  11. Optional Extended Start Down added which allows the locomotive to turn on appliances, lights, motor, etc. over time to better model the prototype start up procedure. 4 August 2003.

  12. Improved operation with Lenz LH100. 7 October 2003.

  13. Made the Bell a state feature rather than a toggle feature to allow the function setting to indicate the bell on or off state. 27 October 2003.

  14. Air brakes added allow a function key, F7, to release more or less simulated air from the brakes line to slow the locomotive at different rates. 25 November 2003. Improved 14 August 2004 and 25 October 2004.

  15. Improved horn/whistle operation by allowing user activation of a short “hoot” to follow a long horn or whistle sound. 25 November 2003.

  16. Improved CV 29 specification: If CV29, bit 5 equals 1, then Ops Mode packet addressed to consist address does not make decoder go to Ops Mode. 31 January 2004.

  17. Status report added which speaks out scale miles per hour (verbal speedometer) when engine is moving and function key is pressed or provides selected loco-behavioral settings in neutral when function key is pressed. 28 April 2004.

  18. Analog lockout: At power up, if CV29, bit 2 is set to 0, locomotive will not respond to analog DC. 28 April 2004.

  19. Steam Chuff adjustment; CV56.12, Chuff Interval Scale Setting, added to allow operator to select different chuff rate or fine tune chuff to get exactly four chuffs per revolution. 28 April 2004.

  20. Doppler pitch shift increments increased to provide a smoother continuous transition. 28 April 2004.

  21. Improved switching direction operation by reducing the time locomotive is stopped before changing direction and removing a jerky start up after stopping. Reducing the time to change direction makes it easier to uncouple cars over track mounted uncoupler magnets. 28 April 2004.

  22. Improved mallet (articulated chuff) to sound more realistic during start up. 28 April 2004.

  23. Playable horn/whistle endings: Alternate horn or whistle is played if the horn function is tapped after releasing horn button. Only available on those models that have alternate endings available. 10 September 2004.

  24. Ditch light function added with alternating lights when horn is blown. 10 September 2004.

  25. Power up improved for Roco and Lenz DCC controllers to insure locomotive starts in DCC rather then entering DC Analog mode. 10 September 2004.

  26. Low Idle improved for diesel locomotives by turning off turbo. 14 October 2004.

  27. Diesel turbo “crackle” sound eliminated. 20 October 2004. Turbo Sound improved, 25 October 2004.

  28. Added software to prevent intermittent direction change with some power packs where the locomotive would loose power and the processor would restart. 11 November 2004.

  29. Default in CV 33 changed to 3 instead of 1 so that FL controls the directional lighting system instead of individual lights. 22 November 2004.

  30. Improvements for low geared diesel switchers include arming brake sounds at >20 smph and trigger < 10 smph. Also brakes arm if air brake button is pressed. DCC acknowledgement improved, especially for locomotives with low current motors. 22 November 2004.

  31. Ditch Lights Strobe Hold Time setting added (CV55.110.5). 12 January 2005.

  32. Modified DCC direction code to eliminate timing problems resulting in changing the motor direction while engine is still moving. 12 January 2005.

  33. Fixed problem with inconsistent memory writes/reads of Long Term Memory (LTM). This problem would sometimes erase or change CV settings and applied only to some locomotives with reed switches. 18 February 2005.

  34. Individual sound records re-scaled to allow the individual sounds to still be heard as system volume reduced to very low levels. 18 March 2005.

  35. Improved consisting operation. If consist active, CV21 instead of CV 22 is used in Function Group 2 instructions. 18 March 2005.

  36. System volume reset when a DCC reset is done. 8 April 2005.

  37. Improved Service Mode acknowledgement for HO315. 9 May 2005.

  38. New GE pumps and dynamic brakes. 10 May 2005.

  39. Improve steam chuff synchronization. 12 July 2005.

Analog Changes and Improvements:

  1. Added software to prevent sounds intermittently going off the air after minutes of operation. 4 September 2002.

  2. Programming advanced by using track polarity rather than variations in track voltage. 24 September 2002.

  3. Regulated Throttle Control/Standard Throttle Control programmed in POP 10. RTC was pervious controlled by load setting in POP 2. With this change load settings can also apply to STC and RTC can be used with zero load setting. 24 September 2002. RTC improved on 15 April 03, 31 January 2003, 28 April 2004, 22 December 2004, 18 February 2004, 18 March 2005, and 8 April 2005.

  4. Separate Short Hoot sound added. 24 September 2002.

  5. High Voltage Circuit Breaker which prevents damage to the Quantum system and motors from some power packs high throttle settings. 24 September 2002.

  6. Labored Drift/Chuff sounds added to steam and labored motor sounds added to diesels under load (Sound-of-Power™). 24 September 2002.

  7. Improved V-Start Operation. 24 September 2002.

  8. Synchronized steam loco headlight operation to dynamo start up. 24 September 2002.

  9. Motor Volume setting added, POP 15. 15 April 2003.

  10. Fan Volume setting added, POP 16. 15 April 2003.

  11. Diesel Cooling Fan Volume setting added. POP 16. 4 August 2003

  12. Steam Blower Volume setting added. POP 16. 4 August 2003

  13. Diesel Turbo Volume setting added. POP 17. 4 August 2003

  14. Added QARC Technology and all associated features to support Quantum Engineer operation. 28 April 2004. Improved 19 July 2004. Air brakes improved 14 Aug 2004 and 25 Oct 2004.

  15. Doppler pitch shift increments increased to provide a smoother continuous transition. 28 April 2004.

  16. Added horn signal when leaving Neutral. If the operator waited pass the transition setting before changing polarity and the horn comes on, then when throttle is increased, a addition short hoot sounds if the locomotive is set to forward or two additional short hoots if the locomotive is set to go in reverse. This results in two horn sounds if the engine is going forward or three if the engine goes in reverse, which are standard prototype horn signals. 14 July 2004.

  17. Playable horn/whistle endings: Alternate horn or whistle is played if the horn button is tapped after releasing horn button. Only available on those models that have alternate endings available. 10 September 2004.

  18. Ditch light function added with alternating lights when horn is blown. 10 September 2004.

  19. Diesel turbo “crackle” sound eliminated. 20 October 2004. Turbo Sound improved, 25 October 2004.

  20. New automatic V-Start procedure implanted that compensates for voltage drop in lower quality power packs. 25 October 2004.

  21. V-Start routine improved by using the initial track voltage, not the end voltage at finish of routine, as the V-Start value. 4 November 2004.

  22. Improved RTC to prevent severe locomotive lurch that occurred on some models. 18 January 2005.

  23. Improved consisting when operating under RTC. The problem: when consisting two or more locomotives together, the engines would surge together and apart with a period of 2-3 seconds at certain speeds. 18 March 2005.

  24. Almost all individual sound re-scaled to allow the individual sounds to still be heard as system volume reduced to very low levels. 18 March 2005. Blower hiss re-scaled on 11 April 2005.

  25. Improved RTC to ensure locomotive comes to a complete stop when air brakes are applied. 8 April 2005. Improved 9 May 2005.

  26. Improve steam chuff synchronization. 12 July 2005.

Minor Fixes and Improvements

In addition to changes listed above from 4 September 2002 though current software releases, many minor improvements and fixes have been made to the Quantum 1 System under DC and DCC to numerous to list here. Dates where fixes were implemented are as follows:

A user can determine the date of his software release under DCC or DC programming. Customers that have purchased recent locomotives will have all these changes.

New additions for Q1a:

The following are changes in Quantum software that has not been available to any OEM equipped locomotive but will be available to OEM’s concurrent with the release of the upgrade program.

Technical Info

Quantum Chip Upgrade

Manuals

General

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