When do you make the decision to buy a DCC booster and where is the best one for a good price? Also how many amps woulds I need.I have two Athearn locos with sound and my other plain locos lost their adresses and I can’t get them to program or even run after I think they are programed.Are my Athearns drawing too much power and taking away from the other locos?
We need much more information in order to be able to answer your questions. Which DCC System are you using? What type of power supply? How many Amps of output?
Two Athearn locos even with sound should not draw even 1 Amp combined. What do you mean when you say “other plain locos” == ones without sound? What brand? What scale? How large is your layout? How many feeder wires do you have to the track.
Many, many details missing.
MRC Prodigy Express, N scale, plain locos without sound.One remote control. Big layout 5x9 ft.Can run or used to run 7 locos at once, four of the are DC and three are DCC.Once I got the Athearns with sound programed, somehow my other ones would not run and I’ve tried over and over to reprogram them to no avail.My program track is isolated and clean.I just can’t figure it out.I have lots of feeder wires all over so I wondered if I need a booster.I just can’t figure out why I can’t program the other two locos I have.
So if I understand correctly, of your 3 DCC locos, 2 of them are Atheran with sound and program correctly, and the third doesn’t program correctly?
You are very correct. That is what’s happening and the locos without sound used to run and now I can’t even for the life me program and put them on the main track and nothing happens.I’ve read the book a 100 times and they will not program. I am very upset.
Has a wire come loose( to the program track)? What decoder is in the engine that won’t program? With some N scale drop-in (board replacement) decoders, there can be issues with adequate contact with the motor terminals - maybe picking up the loco lifted the shell enough to break contact. Most decoders won’t program if there is no motor connection.
–Randy
I’d say to simplify. Lets just try to get one loco at a time running, with nothing else on the layout.
A motor connection shouldn’t prevent a decoder from programming, but you won’t be able to read CVs, or get any feedback as it programs.
Did you say you were running DC locos as well as DCC? What’s your scheme there?
In addition to cleaning the programming track you may have to disassemble the trucks to clean the contact points in them. Dust, pet hair and other grime build up there preventing a loco from running and will also hamper programming. I do that about twice a year as part of regular maintenance or when a loco starts to stall or is not responding on clean track.
I’m confused. You said you have four DC engines and three DCC engines, at least two of which program correctly and the rest of your locos (plural) won’t program.
It sounds from that description like you are trying to program DC engines. Is that the case?
That is not the case here. I have four DC locos and 4 DCC locos of which two are programed and the other two used to be and now they are not.I am about ready to go under my layout and inspect every wire under there.
Well first, adding a booster or not has nothing to do with whether or not your engines are programmed.
The only wiring that would matter would be the wiring to your programming track. If your track wasn’t connected up to the DCC power, none of your engines would work.
Could you explain what you mean that two are “not programmed”? Do you mean, you can’t read any CV’s from them, or that they don’t respond to their assigned ID numbers or ?? Have you tried doing a factory reset on them?? Also, some decoders have a “lock” option, you put a particular no. in a CV and it locks the CV’s so you can’t program the decoder until you undo the lock. Normally if you try to program it, your DCC system will tell you that it can’t find the decoder, since it’s programming signals are blocked.
How do you reset a decoder??? I am new at this and any good information I don’t know might make a world of difference How do ytou unlock it like your saying.These f
One more thing is,Do you reset a decoder by programing it to
0003? It won’t even do that. I even made a separate program track all by itself
and nothing happened either.Could I have fried the decodersa somehow?
Decoder resetting is covered in the manuals that came with your locos. It seems to me you are a bit confused on programming general. I would also suggest you look at the manual that came with your DCC system.
David B
The section about programing a loco, I’ve read over and over.
I see nothing in the manual about locking up or even how to unlock a decoder.
It does say most decoders are set from the factory at 0003 and I’ve programed to that and
nothing happens.This is when you wish you knew someone who lives around here who knows this stuff.I know of two clubs and they don’t even want to run DCC.
I don’t have an MRC DCC system, but with my NCE ProCab Radio throttles I never enter leading zeros before a decoder address. The way you have listed the address as 0003 makes it a long (4 digit) address instead of short 2 digit address. Try entering only one number, 3, as the number to program into the decoder.
With an NCE system, if I were to enter an address as 0003 that would be a long address and I would have to change the value in CV 29 in order to get the locomotive to run.
So I don’t know if this will help, but it’s worth a shot. I have MRC prodigy express, I now know why it was cheap, I couldn’t get a decorder based loco to program no matter what I did. I asked for help here and got a suggestion that maybe it was previously part of a consist. I looked at the section on how to break up a consist and reset the decorder and that worked. Give it a try, the manual, if needed, can be found on MRC’s website. Jason
Froggy I have both MRC systems. to reset a decoder you need to know which kind of decoder you have with NCEs andTCSs write 2 to cv 30. with the express you can not read cvs you would need the advanced handheld
This is the problem. This came up in a different thread - MRC handles it the same way as NCE. If you reset a decoder and then key in 0003, it will NOT run because MRC and NCE treat 0003 as a 4-digit or long address, and a factory reset decoder has a 2-digit or short address of 3. Just key in 3, not all the zeros.
This applies to any address between 1 and 127, If you set a loco to an address like 2501, it’s no issue, 2501 is always a long address. But if you set one to something like 50, it depends on how you keyed it in. If you programmed it to 0050, then you have to key on 0050. If you programmed it to 50, then you key in 50.
–Randy
Does anyone know what MRC’s website is?