hornby Magazine and Railmaster

[96RAF]

I despair of the Geordie accents on telly, most sound more like Irish, similar to how Irish in American films sounds more Scottish.

Tyeble agreed but often sounds like chebble, similar to byuts for boots often comes out boo-its. As kids we would quoin a corner on our bikes, taken from the architectural term for a corner block of a building.

Unfortunately I am slowly losing my native tongue and having to use English instead.

Putting it on tick.....originated in German bars as far as I know. Every time you got a pint a tick was made on your beer mat and at the end you paid the ticks off.

Rob

[Fishmanoz]

Interesting discussion but no parallels in Oz, we tend to move around too much to have developed such dialects. Our tribes tend to be based on sporting rivalries with some geographic overtones - Sydney and Melbourne, Qld and the rest, Western Australia and the rest, but too diverse to develop dialects.

 

Contrast that with a South Pacific country - Vanuatu.  Originally a Melanesian village/tribal area with hundreds of dialects/languages, even some Polynesians in one corner.  They then had the misfortune to have half the country colonized by the British and the other half by the French.  After that with independence, they developed a common language called Bislama, a form of pidgin English.  Speaking with one of the locals when there on holidays some years ago, I asked how they used to communicate before Bislama and colonisation. His reply “we no speak, we killim “.  Killim actually means to hit but the message was clear - in general the tribes didn’t interact and, when they did, they fought each other.  No wonder their languages were different. 

[St1ngr4y]

So Haway Lads,

 

Has anyone found the exciting January 7th announcements yet ?

 

I received an email with a link to the "new Hornby 2019 range", and having trawled through 18 webpages, the only mention I found of Railmaster was a "R7135 Railmaster Select-a-Link Digital Controller"....

 

https://www.hornby.com/uk-en/shop/new-for-2019/railmaster-select-a-link-digital-controller.html

 

This has a picture of what appears to be an interface cable to attach a Select to a PC for £24.99 and can be Pre-ordered to be available in October 2019.

 

Out of curiosity, I went into the settings window of the current Railmaster, and I was surprised to find the Select had been added to the dropdown list of controllers. How long has that been there and why?

 

Ray

[Chrissaf]

How long has that been there and why?

.

Its always been there Ray. It was there in my very first RM installation version 1.52

.

As to why....I assume that making the Select, RM compatible has been on the Hornby development 'road map' since the very early RM launch / release.

[96RAF]

The cable works well Ray believe me. Same baud rate as eLink.

Rob

 

[PJ_model_trains]

Nothing positive in the statement for LD, not for me.

'and later'

'are coming'

'the long awaited LD'

'more to come in later articles'

This all sounds very much like the carrot dangled 3 years ago, another way of trying to keep interest in LD with words like 'coming soon'

I see no constructive statement here that tells me LD will be available soon. How long do Hornby thing customers will wait?

[St1ngr4y]

Hi PJ,

 

Have you been using the post "Edit" facility ? Is that why multiple copies of your post are appearing ?

 

Is it my imagination, or is the Hornby website responding very slowly today?

 

Ray

[Chrissaf]

Ray, the website has been extra slow ALL day today. Due to the today 7th Jan being the day that Hornby have published the 2019 product announcements. This is drawn in higher than usual amounts of internet traffic.

.

The duplicates posts is the symptom of impatience. Clicking save again when nothing appears to happen, but all the multiple save clicks get queued and acted on, causing multiple duplicate posts.

[PJ_model_trains]

Chris

 

There is impatience, and there is the situation that the page hasn't responded for an excessive amount of time and it was not normal for this to happen. 

 

Knowing the duplicates had occurred I left a message, when I could eventually do so, and Rogers politely confirmed it would be dealt with when the system had settled down to a reasonable refresh rate.

[Chrissaf]

I was just making a rational 'why it happens' comment in answer to Ray's question. In an ideal world, Hornby should take into account the extra load on the servers advertising the 2019 announcement date so far in advance is going to create, and make arrangements to have extra capacity in place to prevent the website from being crippled.

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Today was in effect a Hornby self inflicted 'Denial Of Service' attack that has brought the website to its knees. Exactly the same happened last year on the 2018 Product Announcement day.

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In general, it is newbies that duplicate more posts than long standing forum members like yourself. Mainly because even on a normal day, the Hornby site can be slow to respond and the newbie is not used to how the Hornby website performs. At the end of the day, if someone presses the 'save' post button more than once. Then multiple posts will result. The word 'impatience' is a good descriptive word that covers the majority of post duplication scenarios by all types of forum members. I am more than happy to use an alternative word, if you can suggest one that describes a similar duplicate posting outcome.

.

Because I am posting everyday, I hold back my natural tendency to click the 'save' button again when server response is slow. Sometimes it can take several minutes for the post process to complete, but wait long enough and it usually does. Even when the website seems to hang completely and after waiting five minutes nothing has appeared to happen. If I then do a page refresh, I invariably find my post has been published OK. It is very rare for a new post to just get lost in the ether.

.

EDIT - I timed this one and it took nearly 3 minutes to publish after clicking the 'save' button......but it did get published.

[St1ngr4y]

The cable works well Ray believe me. Same baud rate as eLink.

Rob

 

 

Rob,

Are you saying that RM has always been able to control the layout using a Select controller, even though this isn't mentioned in the guide? So the cable you have used - did you get it from somewhere like Maplins (R.I.P.) ? And what will be available in October 2019 - just this cable?

I'm amazed and convinced, until now, in my own mind, that RM only catered for Elite or Elink as the Controller.

I can't recall any Forum posts from anyone experiencing problems with such a setup.

 

Ray

[96RAF]

Ray

According to Hornby the Select was in coded into RM as there was a past project to connect it via the Xpressnet port, but for various reasons it went onto the back burner and the Select was never removed from the drop down list.

 

I saw that Gaugemaster had an interlink cable that converted Xpressnet (RJ12) to USB (B) and that it came with software similar to Decoder-Pro to allow a PC to be used to alter CVs from a GUI rather than direct from the controller. Upon query of Hornby about the use of the device with a Select I was told they were looking at a similar connection and the new cable is the result although it is half the price of the GM one, does not need any special drivers and as for software RM takes on that mantle obviously.

 

You can buy such adaptor cables from specialist manufacturers on the interweb but Hornby will have their own firmware installed to allow the Select to talk to RM, etc. The cable I have is a prototype sample for testing.

 

Rob

 

 

[PJ_model_trains]

Yes Chris, Hornby are to blame, history proves it, so lets not call forum members for the issue. Many things can cause a issue, for me I had just reset an extender, then saw the email and went to the site, at frist I thought it was the extender issue not the amount of traffic and use of the Hornby website. Others may have other reasons, things are not always black and white.

 

What I cannot understand is why the forum and the sales are on the same server, it appears they are as both were affected by the influx of traffic. The amount of traffic may not have been the issue itself, around the said time there was probably a spike in visitors which caused the delays, This waas then compunded by those visiting trying numberous times to view additional pages of the 19 and trying to post on the forum. 1000 actual visitors hitting keys 3x on average would give the effect of 3000 visitors even though there were not that many. The number is used only as an example for what I am trying to say. ;o)

[Chrissaf]

What I cannot understand is why the forum and the sales are on the same server.

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It's worse than that PJ, Airfix, Corgi,  Scalextric, Humbrol, International etc are all on the same group of servers. So they all probably share the same Internet bandwidth. Bearing in mind that they are managed hosted services by a third party. So that their internet bandwidth will most likely be also shared with other non Hornby customers of the same hosting company as well.

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Made doubly worse by Hornby deciding to release 2019 product announcements for all their different brands on the same day. If they had staggered the release dates by brand, then maybe the service experienced yesterday would not have been so dire.

[GWR Greg]

Received the following email from HRMS as a result of an enquiry:

"We will be releasing an update and hoped to have it out before Christmas.  The update also relies on new functionality in the main RailMaster program so both must be released at exactly the same time and there are other items which need to be finalised in RailMaster, hence the delay. "

[PJ_model_trains]

@Chrissaf

 

Definate lack of forward thinking by Hornby. If an issue is not considered it cannot be planned for and will not be budgeted for.

 

Probably also one department doing there bit, releasing new products on a set day, without the IT department being notified. That said having happened last year IT depart should have been aware.

 

Staggering the releases over a week would have no doubt helped, but it is mind boggling to think sales and forum are on the same server. Hacking is so common with forums, and with sales website on the same server there is a half open door to disaster. I think. 

[Pietrarsa]

You can buy such adaptor cables from specialist manufacturers on the interweb but Hornby will have their own firmware installed to allow the Select to talk to RM, etc. The cable I have is a prototype sample for testing.

So it appears not to be a simple cable converter only, it has somehow processor in the black usb plug that act as interpreter for RM software (and mainly for the PC usb port to be recognized), Right?

[Chrissaf]

Right?

.

Yes.....Any cable that connects a USB port to an Xpressnet port has to be an 'active' convertor cable. The USB & Xpressnet port protocols are different. Active meaning an electronic interface convertor circuit typically powered by the USB 5VDC supply.

[96RAF]

You can buy such adaptor cables from specialist manufacturers on the interweb but Hornby will have their own firmware installed to allow the Select to talk to RM, etc. The cable I have is a prototype sample for testing.

So it appears not to be a simple cable converter only, it has somehow processor in the black usb plug that act as interpreter for RM software (and mainly for the PC usb port to be recognized), Right?

 

Right.

I have a similar type of cable for my ESU Lokprogrammer and that has to have the correct code in its PIC chip to be able to talk to a win10 PC. The early ESU cable was only good for up to those PCs that use Vista drivers - win 7 maybe 8.

[Yelrow]

So, being a windows 7 guy. what cable would allow me to connect my select direct. Cant be doing with these updated computers.

[Nick_]

So after the mention of Loco Detect in January's Hornby Magazine, disappointingly there is no mention of it in the 2019 announcements :-(

Indeed I had started to wonder if Hornby were going to give up on RailMaster given the lack of updates we have seen over the last few years but as they have now announced the connector cable for the Select controller I guess there is still going to be life in RailMaster after all.

The connector cable is not due to be available until October 2019! It also appears from the press release that the select firmware is going to be updated to support 29 Functions and programming of CV 1 - 255. I wonder if this means that the eLink is going to be discontinued?

[RDS]

John,

The cable being released for the Select (currently October 2019) would allow it to be connected direct. 

 

However, I thought you have the Elite and it is only possible to connect one controller at a time direct to the layout.  The Select, as you know when used as well, is in Walkabout mode.

 

Unless of course, you are considering it for one of your other scales?

[Fishmanoz]

John, your Windows version shouldn’t affect the cable.  It is converting from the Select Xpressnet to USB and the USB standard doesn’t change with Windows version (I think we can put aside all AC’s qualifications given previously about poor hardware implementations of the USB standard). 

 

But noting what RDS says, connected directly with this cable, you can only use your Elite and Select as controllers A and B, each using their own power supplies and connected to separate DCC circuits. The Select would no longer be a Walkabout.  The conventional way of using controllers A and B is A for Locos and B for points with the points on a separate DCC bus to the track. 

[96RAF]

The Select has to be powered when using this cable, which rules out using it in Walkabout mode. USB power is only used for data transmission. In Walkabout mode the Elite takes the function of the cable.

Rob