The USB interface is not designed to be "hot swapped" between two different systems by going back and forth with a cable change. You will run into a few issues as follows:
The Power Cab and a Smartbooster are two different types of command stations and the USB jumper settings are different for both.
- You cannot change command stations, jumpers or any other setting on the fly. The USB will not recognize them. You MUST reboot the computer AND the DCC system for any changes to take effect. The reason is that settings are only read at startup.
- The available Cab Id’s for the USB interface are different between the Powercab and the SB5. The best solution to this is to leave the USB interface set to a Cab id of 3 at all times. Leave the Powercab set to 2 at all times.
FYI- The onboard LED’s of the USB interface are only on when data is being transmitted.
Off the record – if you are using Windows XP or Windows 8, you might have issues similar to this that might not be related to the board at all. It could be an operating system issue with losing the port settings.
The port settings under the "advanced tab" of the computers Com port being used must match the jumper settings on the USB board. Typically these would be Com port 3, 9600 baud 8 N 1
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