I have the MRC express DCC system. I have been away from the train for a while and since I have came back I cant get any of my locos to program. I have Digitrax decoders, none with sound. When I try to re adress a loco, it quits working, even when done as directed. The locos that I havent tried to readress work, but as soon as I try to readress one I cant get it goin again. Any ideas?
Missabe ModelerI have been away from the train for a while ...
That's the part that caught my eye. In your situation, I would find the manual and go through it, line by line, as if I'd never done this before. Very often, we think we remember how to do things, but we forget one key step and it doesn't work at all. Even worse, the more often we repeat the wrong process, the more ingrained it becomes, and the more convinced we become that we're doing the right thing.
Again, because you've been away, have you tried cleaning your track?
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
What address are you trying to program? Does the engine still run on the old address? CV29 has to be set properly for short or long address.
I have been doin it exactly as it says on the instructions which i dont get. And The locos work on old adresses, but as soon as I try a new one I cant get it to respond. Im not sure what any cvs are set to or anything, but ive never changed them either.
I tried setting CV 8 to 8 to reset the decoders but that didnt help.
Can you read back the address of any of the locomotives?
The Express has no read back capabilities.
Jack W.
missabe modeler, if would be interesting if you could reply to mfm37's post.
Missabe Modeler I have been doin it exactly as it says on the instructions which i dont get. And The locos work on old adresses, but as soon as I try a new one I cant get it to respond. Im not sure what any cvs are set to or anything, but ive never changed them either. I tried setting CV 8 to 8 to reset the decoders but that didnt help.
First question is how are you trying to change the engine address? Does your DCC system have a method of doing this directly, or are you trying to change the address by making changes to CVs yourself? And if you are entering the values in the CVs yourself, how are you determining what values to put in the long address CVs?
Second question is when you reset the decoder, does the engine still respond to the old address or does it not respond at all?
Third question is when you were last using the locomotives, did you have them consisted or were they individually address and operated?
Fourth question is when the engines were originally programmed, did you do this yourself or did someone else do that for you?
I thought I did reply to mfm37. I am not manually setting any cv,s I just know CV#8 set to #8 resets most decoders so I tried. As to how Im changing adresses, Im doin it the way it says on the on controller directions for programing on the program track. I put the loco on the prog. track, select the program button on the controler and select program on program track, I enter the adress Id like, (Ive even tried goin back to the last adress I know worked) and I skip the options to program cvs and other stuff just like the instructions say to do if you dont want to adjust them, and I know the locos have all worked at one time and I havent changed cv's on them.
Truthfully there is a chance some of the locos may have been consistesd last time I ran them, I dont think so but its a possibility. I hope this might help somebody to help me figure out the problem.
If they were consisted then you may have to set CV19 = 0 to clear them. But a full reset CV8=8 (for Digitrax decoders anyway, this does NOT work on all decoders - others have different reset procedures) will reset CV19 along with everythign else. The loco should then run on address 3, and also it shoudl take programming to change to any address desired.
Double check that your cab is set to be Cab 1, only Cab 1 can program on the program track with a Prodigy Express.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Rrinker, how do I make sure my cab is set to 1?
I may have found the issue... I have a test light and found out the other day my mainline is indeed getting power, well I tried again to double check, main has power but not the program track. Im not sure if maybe its not supposed to have constang current or what, but according to my test light the prog track has no power. I hooked the testlight directly to the plug in ports on the power pack, and same thing, power goin to main but not the prog. track. Could this be the issue?
Missabe Modeler I know nothing about finding CV values.. I put the loco on the program track, programed CV8 to 8, and put it on the main (it is a digitraz decoder) and it did not respond. To me this says it is not a isue of programming CV's?
I know nothing about finding CV values.. I put the loco on the program track, programed CV8 to 8, and put it on the main (it is a digitraz decoder) and it did not respond. To me this says it is not a isue of programming CV's?
There is a CV 29 table here: http://www.tonystrains.com/technews/cv29-lookup.htm
There is a CV 17 and 18 long address calculator here: http://ruppweb.dyndns.org/xray/comp/decoder.htm
If you don't remember if the engines were consisted the last time you used them, you will not be able to operate them if the consist address is in CV 19 (?) unless you either reset the decoder, set CV 19 to a value of zero, or remember what the consist address was that you used when you operated them last.
If one of your engines operates at its existing address, but will not accept an address change, and you are unable to reset the decoder to the factory default values (which would mean that the address it operates should be short address 3), this sort of indicates to me that you somehow have the decoder locked. If the decoder is locked, I believe that you cannot change any of the CVs except the CVs associated with the decoder lock (I think 15 and 16). I believe that you also cannot reset a locked decoder. I'll ask again: did you program the engine addresses yourself, or did you have someone else program them for you who might have thought that they were doing you a favor by locking the decoder?
I also don't think you answered my other question, which was "if the engine was responding to an address before you tried to reset the decoder, what happens after you try to reset the decoder? Will it operate properly with the address it had before resetting, or is it totally inoperable?"
So, okay, now that some here have attempted to help, how about telling us what the solution was?
I programed them myself and I mentioned somewhere, but after Id try to readress a loco, it would become inoperable, but as I said in my last post, somehow the bug worked itself out.
I used to have an MRC Prodigy Express before I got my NCE PHP the Prodigy Express has now been relegated to programing duty in the work shop and test track duty. It can sit idle latterly for months and have zero issue when it's fired back up. I have seen this happen but it was with MRC decoders not Digitrax for the best I can remember. What I had to do was program said (problem locomotive ) back default address of 003. Once it was determined that the locomotive operated correctly I then reprogrammed it back to it's correct road number I didn't get into changing CV values that much on the MRC unit. as I didn't see much need for it.One thing you will notice is that it seems that programing on the main works better then on the programing track as i believe there is more power possibly They actually warn you in the instructions about changing CV29 When you program the loco address CV 29 is automatically changed.
The one thing that was changed which can be pretty much done on the fly was the speed step.
Missabe, I am having a similar problem. What did you do to get your loco address changed?