Elite bricked

[RobOO]

You've got two dead elites; and that is okay? I've got one and given the cost to buy it and Hornbys last letter to me with regard it being knackered and there's nothing to be done I've bought something else. I had loads of trouble with my Elite and reading this thread reminded me of all the frustration and anger I had while trying to use what I thought was supposed to be simple. Turns out it was probably always working well below par.

 

It seems the Elite is a consumable item then, not repairable.

[Yelrow]

Robot, hi, you need to remember, that contrary to popular belief, there is life beyond the Hornbyforum.. Had the Elite been a real problem, it would have been recalled, and railway mags would have highlighted it. They did not. Also, it would have come up on all the other forums, and again, barely a mention. Imagine how many were sold, and still are being.. Ihave 2 which have never missed a beat. We only see less than 1 percent on here, plus there are many members who have had no probs. Yes,some updates have caused probs, but most of those were down to windows updates, beyond Hornby. Control. Apart from Pidder, and Rob, I dont recall. any others that totally failed, and none that worked below par. We are not party to failings by other makes, so  can’t make informed opinions.

[Chrissaf]

You've got two dead elites; and that is okay?

.

Rob (RAF96) does a lot of product testing and experimentation. He openly admitted in previous posts that the broken Elites he has were his own user error fault (connecting things together that shouldn't have been done) and not due to just normal 'wear-n-tear'. Thus his Elite failure experiences are not typical of the normal life of an Elite.

[96RAF]

Correct Chris.

 

My Elites have a real hard unrepresentative of normal user life but they have stood up to it well. One has a bodged repair hence is unusable - my hot air soldering iron was set to blow too hard and loosened then scattered a bunch of SMD devices from the main pcb - too much effort to repair it. The other one has no programming output and I just cannot fix both channels of that circuit, only one or the other. The Elite with the DIY backlight is still going strong  - build date 2006.

 

To answer John, the other one known to have failed was HB’s with burnt out components.

 

Rob

[Howbi]

I eventually established the reason for my Elite burn out....... there was insufficuient heat-sink grease........if I had had realised at the time as the box was heating up I could have stopped using it and fixed it but I'm a novice........however all is not lost because the programmimg side of this Elite still works........I picked a pre-owned Elite for £167 so not a major setback.........HB

[96RAF]

I mention heatsink paste in my Teardown articles HB. A nice bit of ali extrusion would be better than the bent tin ones fitted as standard in every Hornby DCC box except the eLink, which incidentally has a couple of decent ones.

 

Booster

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eLink

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I may look for a bit of suitably odd section extrusion and swap them out to see what effect on heat dispersion. Bits of replacement window reinforcement may be suitable.  I have one of those IR remote temp meters that I can check with.

 

Rob

[2e0dtoeric]

Which board is which, Rob? The component lay-outs are very different.

(I've never taken the lid off mine to look inside, following the dictum - if it ain't broke, don't fix it!)

[96RAF]

Beat me to it Chris

I was just going to say the one labelled booster is the booster, etc...

HB I’ve had all the Hornby kit to bits and written them up listing as far as possible parts and known problems.

Rob

[Chrissaf]

Eric, look to the top left corner of each photo. Rob has written what the image relates to i.e the top one is a R8239 Booster and the bottom one is a R8312 eLink.

[RobOO]

You've got two dead elites; and that is okay?

.

Rob (RAF96) does a lot of product testing and experimentation. He openly admitted in previous posts that the broken Elites he has were his own user error fault (connecting things together that shouldn't have been done) and not due to just normal 'wear-n-tear'. Thus his Elite failure experiences are not typical of the normal life of an Elite.

That's fair enough then. I'm just saying how my experience has been. Given that I bought it new I can't blame any previous owner for its faults and given that the USB on the Elite was eratic from the start I've never had a great time with it. 

[Howbi]

HB I’ve had all the Hornby kit to bits and written them up listing as far as possible parts and known problems.

Rob

Thanks for that, Rob, very useful info..........HB

[2e0dtoeric]

Didn't spot those titles, sorry!  😎

I thought the discussion was about Elites!

[Fishmanoz]

If I could just give a summary of the Elite as a piece of kit over some 7 years on this forum, plus being an Elite user myself.  And I’d echo John’s very good point that we tend to only see the problems on here, not the bulk of users whose Elites work just fine. 

 

Hardware:

-  Seems to be a reasonably reliable and robust product

- Hornby do not do component level repairs so, if any component fails, you are on your own. If you can identify the failed component, they are pretty standard and can be replaced. Exception is some of the smaller surface mount types that require specialist equipment to remove and replace, but failures of this nature very rare.

- A few failures noted due to burnout of power output components, usually in older models and sometimes found to be contributed to by heatsink grease drying out

-  A few failures noted in programming circuits, no particular identified mechanism and some may be finger problems in operation rather than hardware failures

 

Firmware:

-  There have been a number of upgrades over the years and v1.41 should be considered the minimum version that operates well.  It is a considerable change and improvement from v1.3 and v1.4 was full of bugs, hence 1.41 being the minimum

-  There has been one only recorded case of an Elite working before an upgrade attempt and failed after.  The failure was almost certainly a hardware failure and cause and effect to the firmware update itself cannot be confirmed as a one-off.  It was looking like the subject of this thread was a second, but not so as it is now working at v1.41

-  In early days, performing an update was a very hit and miss affair, and a failed attempt could result in the Elite being temporarily “bricked” until a successful attempt.  Even when it worked, it often took a number of attempts to do so.  In those days, Hornby themselves kept 2 older PCs in the back of the service centre, being machines that could do upgrades reasonably reliably on returned kit. 

-  In early days, Windows version was significant.  Upgrade worked on XP, usually on W7, hardly ever on W8/8.1 (not never though)

-  A couple of years back, Hornby produced a new boot loader program with 3 different upload speed options to match PC capability.  Since then, upgrades have been the most reliable ever, and independent of Windows version for reliability. Only one instance known where a great deal of difficulty found with this uploader- the subject of this thread.  It should be noted though that a particular process must be followed to put the Elite into Upgrade mode before the upgrade will be successful  

 

So that’s the Elite in a nutshell from my perspective. I’ll now duck while others remember the ones I’ve now forgotten that were different to my recollection. 

[96RAF]

Nicely summarised Fishy.

I would add that the Programming output shares circuitry with the Boost output and this could well be the main cause of failed Programming.

Folk think the Boost is an extra source of power that can be connected to the track, which it is not. It is a low power repeat signal destined for an isolated power district as you know. If you do connect the Boost to the Track then the track power will kill the Prog circuit.

Rob

[ronbram]

Hi, although due to health circumstances I have been away here for a long time, I updated my Elite last weekend, with some trouble. I use XP SP3 on an old laptop. I had no problems connecting the Elite, having the com port popping up in the device manager every time, but when updating, I could drain 4 mugs of coffee and the progress bar would still be blank. Only after using an watch to be sure I held the stop button for 15 secs after powering up and the same before plugging the usb cable I was able to update to 1.44. Some where along the line I plugged into the other usb port of the laptop, but when I remember correctly that was not the key to success. I feared that I bricked the Elite, since when stopping the update and power cycle the Elite would not start anymore, but with perseverence and following the procedure to the letter I finally succeeded.

[ronbram]

And then I suddenly remembered, I have a Select attached to the Eilte as walkaround controller. For the update process to work, I had to unplug the Select.

[2e0dtoeric]

You got there, though! Well done for solving your own problem!

And welcome to this forum and crazy hobby!

[Dukedog.]

Sorry to resurrect a old post but one of mine has had a moment will this help with its revival before I do more damage.

thanks

[96RAF]

Some of the post is irrelevant as stated the updating process changed at v1.42.

You do not say if your Elite is dead at normal start or if you bricked it during an update.

If normal start then check the PSU is live and the jack is making good contact as these can be iffy. Wiggle it.

If bricked during an update, simply repeat the update until it takes.

You could try the diagnostic test by holding the Loco button as you plug in power (release when you see Hornby on screen) and watch it go thru' a self test. You can press each button to check it works as well as speed knobs.

[Dukedog.]

Sorry yes Bricked doing update i get the elite comm error now so is it best to start with 1.41 and just keep trying?

will try the loco button later when i get home.

thanks for the reply

[96RAF]

No - definitely go with v1.45 as the updater is at the point of being foolproof and there are several worthy improvements and bug fixes. The comms error is likely due to it not finding the boot-loader used by the early updater.

Try PC type 2 for starters. If the progress bar races thru' it will fail. So then try Type 1. The PC types are trying to match the data flow rate your PC is sending to that which the Elite can accept.

If you are still struggling come back for the step-by-step noddy guide.

[Dukedog.]

Thank you 96RAF will let you know how it goes

[Dukedog.]

Ok

1 The loco button does not work.

2 error in elite comm! is the error message that comes up.

doing 30 sec between operations

thanks

[96RAF]

When you plug the USB cable in does Device Manager show the change to indicate the comm port in use.

The old method showed the comm port as Elite, but newer Win platform do not.

[Fishmanoz]

And the Loco button self-test will most definitely not work until the upgrade has been successful. It cannot overcome the bricked state of an unsuccessful update.