Help!! How do I wake up a Dead MRC Decoder???

Model Railroader Electronics and DCC
1

Now before You start telling Me about the lack of virtues of MRC just let Me say that I have begun to switch to other decoders but, I have an MRC decoder that was working well untill the other night. The decoder seems to be dead, I can not get the decoder to recognize the cv input.

How do You wake up a decoder to accept the cv values? I had this problem once with the same decoder a couple years ago but can’t remember how I fixed the problem…

2

Did you try a reset on a programming track?

3

Yes I tried setting the Cv to 125 with a value of 1 to reset to factory defaults, but got nothing

4

Did you remove power after programming and connect the power again?

Rich

5

Have you contacted MRC support?

6

Maybe it is fried.

I fried a motherboard once.

ROAR

7

Yes I did that, Still nothing

8

Not yet, But pretty sure they will have Me return it for a charge of $15 Shipping and Handling… I would like to try to get it working without sending it back if possible

9

Got a wobbly table?

10

a What?

11

He means you could put the dead decoder under the table leg thats too short so it won’t wobble anymore.

If it’s going to be $15 from MRC to replace, for a few dollars more you could get a new TCS1 decoder from Kleins for about $20

12

I am not familiar with MRC decoders, but if they have a CV that allows you to lock a decoder, check to see if that may have happened inadvertently.

Dante

13

Try re entering the address. I’ve had MRC decoders stop responding to their address.

Despite their bad rep, All my MRC decoders are still alive and kicking, and blasting out sounds at full volume despite all efforts to lower the volume. They even blow the horn and squeal the brakes all by themselves from time to time. [:-^]

14

There is a Yahoo MRC Group dedicated to discussing MRC products.

Yahoo has Groups for other brands of DCC products.

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/MRC-DCC/info

Rich

15

Is it just me? I can’t even read posts on Google Groups with out joining first. And then you have to wait for approval.

16

I tried every thing to reset one once. After running for about 10 seconds on channel 3 (just long enough to move it onto the programming track to change the address) it lost its little brain. I was finally so angry that I put it back in the box and boycotted Athearn until they stopped using them. Last spring, 7 years later, I got it out and it had reset itself to factory defaults. Works fine now.

Is this one of the units with the wireless DC control boxes? If so I think one is supposed to be able to reset to factory defaults using that box and DC power. So, if so, I’ll dig out the instructions for mine that has that type of controller and pass the info on.

17
18

Oh I should say also that I use the MRC Prodigy Express System

19

I’ve had a couple of MRC sound decoders die over the years. The first was in an Athearn Challenger. It just quit working and nothing would bring it back.

The second was a steam sound decoder in a Bachmann steamer. It quit working after 11-years.

How old is your unresponsive decoder? Some of the older models did not reset with CV125. You had to reset a series of CVs on a programming track, one at a time to reset the decoder. The following is courtesy of Tony’s Train Exchange, many years ago:

CV1=3, CV2=0, CV3=0, CV4=0, CV5=0,CV17=0, CV18=0, CV19=0, CV20=2

Note: Tony says to “Make sure you do not have an advanced consist number [CV19].”

Don’t know if this will solve your problem but it should be worth a try.

20

Thanks for the tip Allan, I just saw this post and its late here so Tomorrow after work I will give that a try, I’ll let You know how it goes