diodes Archives - The Silicon Underground

LEDs for American Flyer, Lionel, and Marx trains

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 22 Feb 2019 13:00:31 +0000

A frequent, sometimes heated topic of debate is upgrading to LED lighting in the headlight of vintage American Flyer, Lionel, or Marx trains. It shows how sometimes a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. You have several options for

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All about the Lionel KW

Dave Farquhar — Mon, 06 Feb 2017 12:00:13 +0000

The Lionel KW is the second most powerful, and second most popular Lionel transformer of the 1950s and 1960s. If the Lionel ZW was Lionel’s Cadillac, the KW was Lionel’s Buick. It was a 190-watt transformer and Lionel sold it from

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All about the Lionel ZW

Dave Farquhar — Mon, 30 Jan 2017 12:00:22 +0000

The Lionel ZW is Lionel’s most iconic transformer of the 1950s and 1960s, and perhaps one of its most iconic products, period. Everyone wanted the two-handled, football-shaped, 275-watt powerhouse that was the ZW. It was one of Lionel’s more venerable

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Replace a Lionel RW rectifier disc with a diode

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 25 Jan 2017 12:00:02 +0000

Vintage Lionel transformers activated the whistle using a rectifier disc. These discs tend to degrade over time. You can expect to pay about $5 for a replacement disc. But a modern diode is much cheaper, works better, and is more

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Lionel KW diode installation

Dave Farquhar — Mon, 23 Jan 2017 12:00:03 +0000

Lionel transformers use a selenium rectifier disc to produce a jolt of DC voltage to activate their train whistle. These discs degrade over time, so a decades-old transformer often produces a pretty anemic whistle–even one of the bigger transformers like

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Fare thee well, Radio Shack. Hello, Battery Shack!

Dave Farquhar — Thu, 09 Apr 2015 11:00:00 +0000

The new owners of what’s left of Radio Shack want to specialize in batteries. Although this isn’t a guaranteed survival plan, it makes sense to me. Last week, I went to one of the few remaining Radio Shack locations to

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How to wire LEDs and other circuits risk-free

Dave Farquhar — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 20:51:20 +0000

I see a lot of questions about how to wire up circuits, and unfortunately when people ask these questions on train forums, those innocent questions often devolve into heated and unproductive discussions focused on the math and physics involved, or

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How to make a Lionel train whistle

Dave Farquhar — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 19:50:34 +0000

How do you make a Lionel train whistle? Well, you need a whistling tender and a transformer with a whistle button or handle. If it’s all wired correctly, pushing the button or handle while the electric train is moving will

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Mac emulation and insights

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 10 Oct 2000 17:16:18 +0000

I'm scaring myself. I've been playing around with Mac emulation on my PC at home (I can get an old Quadra or something from work for nothing or virtually nothing, but finding space to set it up properly in these cramped quarters would be an issue, especially since I'd have to give it its own keyboard and mouse and possibly its own monitor). My Celeron-400 certainly feels faster than the last 68040 I used, and I greatly prefer my clackety IBM keyboard and my Logitech mouse over anything Apple ever made, so this emulation setup isn't bad. I've got MacOS 8.0 running on my Celeron 400, though on an 040 (especially an emulated 040), 7.6.1 would be much better if I can track down an installation CD for it by some chance.

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