richard carr
Western Thunderer
I bought one of these a few months ago and when it turned up with ribbon cable as the connection method I was a bit puzzled as to what to do so it sat there for quite a while doing nothing.
Now this is my 4th install of the MX696, the ribbon cable works really well so here are the details of how I have done it.
The MX696 is one of the large scale Zimo decoders, it is rated for 4amps continuous current and 10 amps peak ! It has 8 function outputs giving up to 2 amps current in total and has a 10 watt amplifier for the sound. It should more than cope with a Heljan loco and has enough sound for a really big speaker.
It does not have a built in stay alive but has the support circuitry to accept capacitors.
Here's the decoder with the ribbon cable.
It is 69mm by 29mm by 18mm high, you can snap off the ends to make it only 55mm long if need, i'll be doing this to get it into a Heljan 25.
The ribbon cable gets gently clamped in the connectors you can see at the top of this photo and then you squeeze it all together in a vice and you now have 10 connections in one connector and 20 in the other.
Here it is the vice ready tobe forced together
You can see 5 sets of teeth here and behind that is another set of 5.
And here it is all squashed together. These now plug into the decoder and you solder the loco wires tothe ribbon cable.
Here's the decoder with the 20 way connector fitted to the decoder
Now this is my 4th install of the MX696, the ribbon cable works really well so here are the details of how I have done it.
The MX696 is one of the large scale Zimo decoders, it is rated for 4amps continuous current and 10 amps peak ! It has 8 function outputs giving up to 2 amps current in total and has a 10 watt amplifier for the sound. It should more than cope with a Heljan loco and has enough sound for a really big speaker.
It does not have a built in stay alive but has the support circuitry to accept capacitors.
Here's the decoder with the ribbon cable.
It is 69mm by 29mm by 18mm high, you can snap off the ends to make it only 55mm long if need, i'll be doing this to get it into a Heljan 25.
The ribbon cable gets gently clamped in the connectors you can see at the top of this photo and then you squeeze it all together in a vice and you now have 10 connections in one connector and 20 in the other.
Here it is the vice ready tobe forced together
You can see 5 sets of teeth here and behind that is another set of 5.
And here it is all squashed together. These now plug into the decoder and you solder the loco wires tothe ribbon cable.
Here's the decoder with the 20 way connector fitted to the decoder