Better call Ring.

Have you tried applying the new update to the HC again?

Hows your soldering skills? It's doable to keep the existing motherboard and use a 21pin adapter but you've got some work to do and the only outputs the adapter can power is the headlights and the front ditchlights (depending on the adapter you have).

It's as I thought. See all those little items labelled Q1 to Q8 on the bottom on the motherboard? those are the transistors to "amplify" the logic level outputs from the Loksound decoder to make them capable of driving LEDs, lamps etc. It appears all the resistors are on the motherboard as well. This is a plus and a negative. Negative because we can't use them with the adapter and plus because we can easily bypass them.

What you will need to do is for each item in the table that has a logic level output is (ignore the transistor in the table, I was just guessing which transistor was for which output):

Unsolder the wires between the pads between the little boards (on the chassis) and the motherboard and solder on a wire from the LM to the pads on the little boards. You'll need to put a resistors inline as well. U+ will need to be connected to the blue wire on the 9 pin harness.

Table 1 : Rapido B36-7 - LokSound Auxilliary Outputs

Output	Output type	Programmed effect	Transistor (guessed)	DCC mapping
X1	Power	Ditchlight Type 1 (alt phase)		F6 - Ditchlights (Front)
X2	Power	Ditchlight Type 1		F6 - Ditchlights (Front)
X3	Logic	Dimmable Headlight	1	F11 - Class lights (Rear)
X4	Logic	Dimmable Headlight	2	F19 - Numberboards
X5	Logic	Dimmable Headlight	3	F11 - Class lights (rear)
X6	Logic	Ditchlight Type 1	4	F6 - Ditchlights (Rear)
X7	Logic	Ditchlight Type 1 (alt phase)	5	F6 - Ditchlights (Rear)
X10	Logic	Oscillating Headlight	6	F17 - Emergency light
X11	Logic	Gyra light	7	F13 - Gyra light (Front)
X12	Logic	Gyra light	8	F13 - Gyra light (Rear)

                              

or, as much as I really don't want to say you might be able to use a decoder buddy from nixtrainz and use the adapter with that and scrap the factory motherboard all together.

You could also, if you feel macho enough just make a new "motherboard" from plain PCB or stripboard and go from there.

-Tim

I think the purple wire is used as a chuff trigger on steamers

HC-2 and HC-2b adds additional functionality for future products, as well as a new splash screen on power up, similar to the HC-3.  But besides that I don't know of anything else.

-Kevin