Dash 9 DCC/QSI install

This is a pretty easy locomotive to work on, just a few "gotchas"

There is a removable hatch on top of the body, it's the center section here:

Grab the sides of the hatch, and pull up, rocking a bit side to side:

You can now see the cover plate inside, and there are 6 screws around the edges. Don'r remove the screws on the smoke unit!

Now, using the smoke unit as a "handle", GENTLY pull the board up and away:

OK, the picture below is the original Aristo model. You can see the 12 pin "shorting plug" on the left in socket J1 (a small circuit board with 12 solder blobs) and the 10 pin J2 socket (with nothing it it)

Yes, there's a lot of wires connecting it... rotate it away from you as shown. Now you can see the socket:

In the picture above, the "shorting plug" is still plugged into the socket. It's on the left, the vertical row of solder blobs, it just pulls straight out. When this is plugged in, it directly connects the track pickups to the motors.

Below is a closeup of the Aristo main board. I have flipped the picture over so more of the silk screened text is readable.

The speaker socket is the 3 pin socket at the bottom right. (only the 2 outer pins are connected). If you look at the silkscreening, you can see it says SPK just above the socket. Do NOT confuse the 2 pin connector to it's left, that is DC power, labelled: SOUND PWR, intended to power a separate sound system.

You also see the Aristo "socket" the J2 connector on the left, and the J1 is on the right, with the shorting plug in the socket itself, just to the rigth of the 22UF/35V capacitor. The shorting plug is removed when using a decoder in the socket.

After you get the QSI in the socket, and check to see you got all the pins in, then you get a connector for the speaker socket (I believe Aristo sells them, and maybe QSI is supplying them) and connect the 2 wires to the correct terminal screws on the QSI board, which are J2A-1 and J2A-3 for a single speaker. Of course if you are using 2 speakers, you can use terminals 4 and 5 also to the second speaker.

Bachmann version:

On J1 there are three functions

Front Headlight J1-4  1.9 mA
Rear Headlight J1-9  1.9  mA

Most users will connect these terminals to a function output on the device they put in the socket which switches the pin to ground to turn them on.  Doing it this way allows directional or independent control and also headlight dimming. through the device installed in the socket.

There is one identified compatibility that has been identified. Revolution has two sets of products.  One provides linear motor control and one provides PWC motor control.  Unfortunately the PWC frequency and approach used by Revolution is not compatible with the Dash 9 headlight lighting circuits. The revolution engineers are aware of this and hopefully will have a solution with their plug in board adaptor shortly.

The third function on J1 is the Smoke activation function.

J1-8 Smoke Activation 11.2mA  The smoke unit itself draws up to around  0.6A. but this current is funneled through the + and - connections and not through the function pin.

This function pin can be connected to any available function output or you can manually install a wire between the J1-8 solder pad and the J1-7 ground solder pad.  When this is done the switch on the top of the locomotive can be used to turn on and off the smoke.

J2 functions,  Plug in devices specifically designed for Aristocraft locomotives normally do not support connections to J2.  The total current draw is well under 50mAs so all the functions can be connected to the revolution functions if so desired.

J2-10 Front Number board lights 5.5 mA (2 leds)
J2-9 Cab Light 2.8 mA
J2-8 Safety Lights 20.1 mA (8 leds)
J2-7 Right Ditch Light  2.8 mA
J2-6 Left Ditch Light  2.8 mA

Note a feature not documented in the manual is that the front ditchlights will not turn on if the front headlight is also not on.