The story thus far.
I have a P2K dcc/sound E6 locomotive. Sometimes when shuting the engine down I’ll use the double press of the f9 key. One double press for standby etc.
Last night when I went to fire the engine up it would only respond by coming alive with the engine sound and then go into shutdown, silent… non responsive. No problem, that’s what it’s supposed to do when you use the above method for turning the engine off. To fire it up, simply do a double press of the 6 key and it’ll go through the startup procedure automatically. So, I did that… nothing happened. Did it again… and again… did it many times… nothing. Well, maybe I need to do a reset to factory defaults and start over. I take the shell off, locate the little reset -jumpers cover and start to take it off with small pliers. Now more problems… I let the pliers slip, breaking the plastic cover. That’s the little devil the red arrow is pointing to.
I proceed with the reset by turning on the power to the track and a voice from the locomotive says “Reset!” and the locomotive sounds come on. Great!.. I think. Problem solved! But wait… the instruction book said the voice wouldn’t be a voice, instead I should hear 3 short toots… not someone saying Reset!. Never mind, says I… probably just a oversight in the manual. I replace everything and try it out.
Silence. No… worse than silence. Graveyard quiet. No sound, no movement, no lights no nothing.
I look the broken part over really good…
and I can’t really tell exactly what I did, other than evidently mangle it pretty good.
The one thing that is evident is something is not contacting something else that it should be contacting. How’s that for sheer brilliant thinking!
Anyway, I give Walther’s, who now owns the P2K line, a call and try to order the part. The man I spoke with was very nice
Looks like a standard jumper like from a hard drive, used in most computers on the motherboards too. Stop by a computer shop with it and see if they can help.
Hmmmm… I have a couple of old motherboards around here somewhere. Thanks Gappleg, I’ll check it out.
Jarrell
Follow up.
Talked to Walther’s again and they’re going to replace the entire circuit board at no charge. How’s that for customer service.
I’m thinking the circuit board itself was the initial problem anyway because it would not respond to any command no matter what I tried. Well, I’ll know in about 10 days or so.
Jarrell
FWIW - The digitrax DS-54 uses the same jumper. The jumper is only used when programming? So you have an emergency jumper if you need one.
Terry[8D]
Guys, I hate to admit this but maybe someone else had done similar things. You know I said I did a reset but it still wouldn’t work? The engines number is 29. When I tried the engine AFTER doing the reset, it wouldn’t work. Do you know what I was doing wrong? 
I was sitting and reading a book a little while ago , got sleepy leaned back and closed my eyes and then it hit me! Jarrell, you DUMMY!
I got up, went in the train room, set the Digitrax control box for engine 03, yes OH THREE, what it had been reset to, and it worked like a charm. #*&@!! I can’t believe I did that.
Anyway thanks for the help!
Jarrell
Aren’t those “2 by 4 over the head” realization moments just precious? [^] (I probably have one at least once a week.) Jarrell, your a man after my own heart…[(-D]
Tom
Tom, you shoulda seen it. I jumped straight out of the chair when it dawned on me, thinking how could I be so dense. [:D]
Anyway, I’m glad it’s working.
Jarrell