I installed a Sagami can motor in a brass 2-6-0. I ran it on DC & it ran perfectly. My wife(bless her) bought me a NCE Power Cab for Xmas. So after going to all the work of remotoring I thought it deserved a sound decoder. I installed a DSD-90. When I placed it on the program track the sound reacted to the throttle changes, the bell & whistle responded. I was able to select the whistle I liked. BUT the engine would not move at all & when I blew the whistle the rear lite would come on. I tried setting acel mid & max settings-no luck. Then after about 10 minutes I noticed the “magic smoke” coming out of the tender.
I have isolated the brushes’ metered everything & triple checked all my wiring-nothing wrong. I wondered if maybe the gear mesh had locked up the motor so after disconnecting the now fried decoder I connected it to DC runs perfectly.
I went on the Soundtrax site & will be sending it in for warranty repair as soon as mynot so LHS (250miles away) sends me a reciept.
I was just wondering if there is something I have overlooked here or if anyone has had a similar problem. I think it must be a faulty decoder.
You said you put it on the program track. The locomotive will not move and it should not make any sound on the program track. Program track has too little voltage to generate sound and power motors. You must have tried to program on the main. The first thing you should do after instaling a decoder is set up you program track first (program + 4 keys on power cab) and then set the loco on the track. If it has a bad decoder the display will read an error or can not read CV. If the locomotive had a short it would have tripped the breaker in the power cab.
Malfunctioning decoders do show up now and then. I had a Loksound decoder stuffed into a P2K SD9 it ran fine for 2 weeks until a train show and poof. One wire broke from the 8 pin plug and touched the frame. Now I hard wire all my sound decoders and most of my non sound decoders.
Sorry to hear about your issue with your DSD-90. But I am curious…why not use the Tsunami chipset? It is at about the same pricepoint but is a far, far better decoder.
Pete; I did what you suggested. I programmed on the program track & then moved to main line. The sound responded to the throttle settings but the loco would not move. I did not get cannot read cv message. I got man. # & version #. Realy got me stumped. I wanted to find out if I did something wrong so I can correct it before I get new one so I don’t blow it too.
Dave: I phoned my HS that I deal with all the time & he suggested this decoder. I paid $94.95 I don’t how that compares to Tsunami. Maybe I got what I paid for?
Dave, maybe you should look at where I am from, same as you CANADA. The price I paid was Canadian $ not US $ + shipping + Canada POst fees. I am on a pension so I have to spend my $ where I can get the most bang for my buck. While I appreciate your taking the time to reply to my post you did not reply in any way to my question.
The Dispatcher in Calgary has them on for 119. You could probably do better with your LHS. The point being that the difference in price is a steal with the extra feature you get with the Tsunami.
Remember that the Canadian Dollar is .95 US. And if you get it shipped USPS air, there is never any duties in my experience.
Are the Sagami motor’s brushes totally electrically isolated from the locomotive frame? If the motor is touching the frame and both brushes are not totally isolated, the motor is shorting out. With a DCC decoder installation there can be absolutely no electrical contact between the motor brushes and a metal frame.
Cacole; Thanx for your reply. Yes the brushes are isolated from the frame. I went one step further & took a toothpick & put silicone on the tabs where you solder the wires to the motor. As I said on the program track & on the main the sounds all worked but the engine would not. There was a couple of strange quirks I noticed. The rear light would come on when I blew the whistle but not when I reversed the control. The front light stayed on regardless of which direction I set. I have installed 12 decoders in various locos & only had a problem with one. I made a mistake with 2 wires & instantly blew the decoder. After that I am very careful wiring . This one did not burn up inatantly - I was attempting to change CVs to see if I could get the loco to move. This took about 15 minutes. After checking & metering & checking & metering I can find nothing wrong. I can only think that something is wrong with the decoder.
I would suspect a defective decoder. I have some 090s and 100s but I made a small decoder tester with a couple LEDs and an old low current open frame motor, plus a spare speaker. I always try out the decoder in this little tester I made. I thought the program track setup limited current. Not sure with the NCE system.
You might try the Yahoo soundtraxx group. They have a lot of info.