Yes, I think the problem is that the Not PF receiver doesn't modulate the 9v rails. They probably don't care about the legacy 9v use case and just did it to cut cost.

@@NonsenseWars From what i understand the 9v rail i supposed to be 9v at all times, i could be wrong though, It would make sense that 9v is always 9v, and that c1 and c2 are used to drive motors, which would mean if the cable works on the real ir receiver that it should work on the fake one too. Unless the c1/c2 on the fake aren't modulated. But if c1/c2 are modulated than i would think that it should work, because it worked on the real one. I have not tested this so i don't know for certain. But i'd be perplexed if they were regulating the 9v rails. The whole point of them is a secondary continual source of power. Since with 9v adapter cables you can just wire c1/c2 to the motor and it should work as expected. Wiring it to 9v would make it run continually, no matter what you did on the input.

​ @killingtimeitself Ok, I read up about this a bit more on Philo's site: www.philohome.com/pf/pf.htm It looks like at least for the "dumb" PF motors, they're all controlled from the C1/C2 lines, so they don't care about the 9v lines at all. The 9v lines - according to Philo - are only used to power the PF servo, which uses C1/C2 as control lines, and therefore doesn't need any regulation on the 9v lines. The 9v adapter cables seem to run the 9v lines to the 9v connector, not C1/C2.

@@NonsenseWars thats weird, but definitely one of the solutions, unless thats an unofficial cable. It's weird because with the receivers you can actually daisychain them, on the output of another receiver, due to the 9v and gnd pins they will be powered at all times, regardless of the state of the other pins. Which is really convenient. I would think the 9v adapter would wire to c1/c2 but like i said im not familiar with that so perhaps i should test it myself lol. It would make a lot more sense if lego had wired it to c1/c2 since you could plug it into a receiver and it would "just work" I suppose its possible they wired one side to one set and the other side to another but that sounds like it would be more confusing than anything. edit: according to a video on the TechnicRobot channel, an old source of power functions tech stuff, has a video showing that c1/c2 connect to the underside of the 9v plug, which is the adapter cable, which makes sense to me.

I haven't really found a steady source... the eBay stores that have them come and go. I usually just search for "lego power functions" and all the cheap stuff is knock off stuff. Often you can find listings like this where u can buy multiple types of knock off equipment from one seller: www.ebay.com/itm/196266444570 I wouldn't trust this particular one due to the low feedback count though. You can usually get your money back on eBay if they don't ship anything, but it takes time and it's a pain.

Thanks. How do you know which one is 2.4Ghz?

@@AmericanXnoob2 I think they are all 2.4GHz, but we don't have the tools to verify this particular spec.

Yeah, generally speaking these are like half the price of their genuine counterparts on BrickLink. More, if you want to get them new.

Yeah, they do! Not as well for the old 9v (pre-PF) motors though.

@@NonsenseWars thank you that was super helpful! I bought my son the 8293 power functions set. I'll now get a third party reciever and transmitter, I assume all third party sellers are very similar. Let me know if you have a specific third party seller you would recommend.

@@MarketScraper Yeah, as far as I know all the Not PF knockoff stuff is basically the same thing. I have not found anyone selling something significantly different (yet).

@@NonsenseWars awesome thanks again for sharing your knowledge!

Ah! I thought I did... and it did too! In fact I've purchased these from more than a couple sellers now and they've all worked with each other, so I'm even more confident that they are all the same.

What did you use them for? I've mostly used Ls and I haven't had any fail on me yet... but I also haven't run them at very high load for a long time either.

@@NonsenseWars All of them were Technic Mocs, mostly high torque and high power.

Up until maybe even a year ago you could still get the 42095 at MSRP, but the prices have definitely gone up by now.