As in the NCE line of decoders, almost all the HO decoders are essentially the same, the contain the same basic functions for motor control, silent running, lighting effects etc. The primary difference is simply their size, shape and method of installation. Some decoders are built as replacement to factory boards, some plug-in to a socket on the factory board and some are meant to be hard wired to the loco, more of a generic design such as the DA13SR(J). With NCE the suffix ‘SR’ indicates silent running.
I’ll echo a previous comment - always test a new installation on the programming track. This will avoid blown decoders and takes very little time.
They’re all describing the same thing. There are three types of decoders:
“Plug-in” have the 8-pin setup, you remove the dummy plug and plug in a decoder.
“Drop-in” where you replace the lightboard with a decoder shaped like the lightboard (as found in Atlas, Kato and other locos) and
“Hard-wire” where you have to solder the wires to the leads for the motor etc.
BTW back to the original post about choosing decoders…I think a lot of people think that you have to do like 40 CV settings to get a decoder to work. You don’t!! I would try to get decoders that have a lot of options (different lighting effects, Back EMF “cruise control” etc.) and install them. You don’t HAVE to use all those effects now, but it’s nice to have them if you do decide to use them…at least, to me, it would be better to do that than to install really basic decoders, only to find down the road you have to replace them to get what you want.
Plug in the decoder, put it on the programming track and search for the ID no. If “03” comes up, follow your systems directions to change the ID No. (preferably to the locomotive’s no.) and then put it on the layout and run it !! You can always do other settings (momentum etc.) later.
You can buy what I guess we could call “adapters” that have a 9-pin receptacle on one end and an 8-pin plug on the other. Say you have a “hardwire” decoder with 9 wires sticking out of it, the wires are part of a 9-pin “harness” that snaps into the decoder, you can remove that and plug in a harness that will have an 8-pin plug on the other end instead. I used to get them from a co. that is unfortunately out of business now, but I’m sure other people make them.
A year ago I was not particularly interested in DCC - at least as far as locomotive control went - and so I tended to ignore these DCC postings here on the forum. I can’t say exactly where my attitude began to change but I, like Shawnee has done, I am prepared to take the DCC plunge, and like Shawnee, based upon recommendations I am (probably) going with an NCE system. I have had only limited contact with DCC and it probably sounds just a little crazy but one of my likes about NCE is the heft - perhaps ‘feel’ might be a better term - of their throttles; I just cannot quite get comfortable with Digitrax’s throttles.
One of the things which tickled my interest was the discovery that there are some software packages out there designed to interface DCC systems to computer control. There have been numerous topics here on the forum dealing with design/programming problems involving DCC and as, I read these, it began to turn over in my mind that these problems could, most likely. be breached with computer programming. I feel comfortable with Pulse Position Modulation, having encountered it in my Air Force AFSC - Radio Relay/Microwave/Multiplexing. I have really only given some cursory thought to this area but I did do a very slapdash flowchart which indicated that, most likely, I would be dealing with nine to eleven thousand addresses of code, and for you non-programmers out there, THAT’S A HECKUVA LOT OF CODE!!!
I am, at the same time, getting a little interested in sound; except for those sound systems installed in ‘very large’ locomotives - G Scale and O Scale - I have been just a little disappointed in sound reproduction in N Scale. It is, however, getting noticably better and I think that there might be some kind of technology breakthrough on the horizon in this area opening a marked improvement in sound quality for N Scale. I don’t have the slightest idea exactly what that techn
Yup - you mean like some of the newer Athearns? Just remove the ‘dummy’ board and plug in the decoder - although check the way the lights are connected as sometimes the diodes and/or resistors are on the ‘dummy’ boards.
And this is why I don’t mind hard wiring the decoders - you can buy the ‘dummy’ plugs for the 9-pin plug/socket sets (Digitrax sells them, I’m sure other do as well) so if I want to remove a decoder and restore the loco to DC operation I can just plug in a dummy board. Or if the decoder fails, I can repalce it easily. That’s why I use the SRJ and not the SR, the SR just has wires with no 9-pin plug, so replacing that deocder would mean cutting the wires.
Great choice. While I have a Digitrax Chief in storage with my trains, NCE makes an excellent DCC system and I’d be as happy or maybe more so with it. Have fun!