Programing troubles

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
1

I have an MRC Prodigy Express on my HO layout and I’m having trouble setting the adddress, top voltage, acceleration et al, on two Bachmann Spectrum DCC equiped locos I have. They don’t take the changes. I have tried using the program track on the layout. When this didn’t work I tried running the leads directly to a couple of tracks not tied to the layout and I still couldn’t set the address or anything else. I can run the engines on the default address #3 separatly but this defeats the purpose of going DCC.

Any thoughts on what might be the issue? (user error perhaps? Though I’m following the directions to a tee)

J.P.

2

I don’t have an MRC system but I can tell you that the CV’s that control the top, mid, and starting voltage cannot be changed on the Bachmann factory installed decoders (Lenz). Momentum can be adjusted.

As for not being able to set the address, I’m not sure what the problem is. Hopefully someone with a MRC Prodigy system will be of assistance.

Bill

3

Hi,

Hhhmmm! interesting. I don’t mind so much about the voltage settings but I, obviously, want to change the addys

Thanks for the info.

4

This is a quirk of sound units but you might try it and see as all it will take

is a few minutes of your time. Change CV 62 to 0 as this prevents sound

units from loading two CV’s at once as is the case of long addresses (CV’s

17 and 18) If it accepts the long address then you can change 62 back to

1 for normal operation

5

If it is one of the sound decoder equipped locomotives, you may need to purchase the Soundtraxx PTB programming track booster or the PowerPax programming track booster.

6

No, it’s not a sound decoder its a…I guess they’re called function decoders. And actually I had some success with one of them, now the second loco isn’t running on addy #3 anymore. I got some success using terminal connetors on my prog track. I guess I didn’t have a good connection B4.

J.P.

7

jep1267,

The Bachmann DCC chips are actually low cost Lenz decoders. They will accept 4-digit addresses and CVs 2 (Start voltage), 3 (Acceleration Momentum), 4 (Break Momentum), should be adjustable.

I have a Digitrax Zephyr and programing any Lenz, Atlas or Bachmann decoder requires the use of a 1/4-watt, 1K ohm resistor across the programing track to fool the Z into increasing its programing signal power. I don’t know if this trick is necessary, or that it would even work, with a Prodigy system.

Digitrax also suggests that Direct Mode, vs. Paged Mode be used when programming Atlas/Lenz/Bachmann decoders.

I don’t know if this will help, but thought I would throw it into the mix.

Good luck!