I have three locomotives that run perfectly, sound lights etc. The problem is I can not reprogram any of them, they are stuck on factory setting address 03. The three locos in question all have tsunami sound on board and where purchased that way. Any attempts to change the address or any of the CV's results in nothing. I have attempted to program in both OPS mode and Direct mode but to no avail. A list of the troublesome equipment is below
Digitrax DCS 51 Zephyr Extra
Walthers Proto 2000 E8A
Walthers Proto 2000 E7B
Athearn Genesis GP7
Please any help would be greatly appreciated.
Hi, welcome to the forums! It's not the locos, it's a communication/power issue between the command station and the decoder. I have a Zephyr Xtra with tsunami's and had the same issue. Sometimes there's no enough juice to change the address, most of the ohter CV's will be ok when programming.
You need to use the "blast mode" for programming addresses. On the command station, change OpSw07 to "c". Then do the address changing and they should accept the change. Make sure you only have one loco on the track when you're doing this. When you get done, change the command station OpSw07 back to "t" for normal mode. This is on page 55 of the Digitrax Zephyr manual.
Some people have this slight snafu and others don't when it comes to changing the address.
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Yes, it IS a decoder problem, a poor design that needs too much power. Let's not gloss over this, the more we accept this the less motivated the decoders makers will be to resolve this. Wh is this a problem with soem sound decoders and not others? Because some decoder makers have this figured out, and others do not.
That said, my Zephyr has zero issues reading and writing Tsunamis. Or QSI. Or Loksound. Neither does my PR3 in standalone mode. I've neve users blast mode. My program track connects to the Zephyr with about a foot of #18 speaker wire, soldered to a piece of flex track. This is standalone - the flex track is not incorporated into my layout, so there are no toggles to isolate it or any of that, just a direct pair of wires run to a piece of track. My PR3 is configured similarly, althought he wire there is maybe 2 inches long, the track and the PR3 are mounted to a shelf board with Kadee height gauges on each end (track gapped - the metal gauges cause a short otherwise) and also marked with NMRA weights at the proper distance - an all purpose test and program track.
I recently confirmed that QSI decoders program fine, I just aquired an Atlas Trainmaster and all I did was set it on my program track and do the normal procedure to set the 4 digit address to the cab number. Put it back on the main and it responded tot eh new address, no longer 3.
ABout the only 'extra' is that I do the programming from a DT400, my Zephyr is actually up under the benchwork andnot easily accessible at the moment. Otherwise, I really don't knwo what I do differently that makes my system work and others have problems with an otherwise identical system.
--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 Yes, it IS a decoder problem, a poor design that needs too much power. Let's not gloss over this, the more we accept this the less motivated the decoders makers will be to resolve this. Wh is this a problem with soem sound decoders and not others? Because some decoder makers have this figured out, and others do not. That said, my Zephyr has zero issues reading and writing Tsunamis. Or QSI. Or Loksound. Neither does my PR3 in standalone mode. I've neve users blast mode. My program track connects to the Zephyr with about a foot of #18 speaker wire, soldered to a piece of flex track. This is standalone - the flex track is not incorporated into my layout, so there are no toggles to isolate it or any of that, just a direct pair of wires run to a piece of track. My PR3 is configured similarly, althought he wire there is maybe 2 inches long, the track and the PR3 are mounted to a shelf board with Kadee height gauges on each end (track gapped - the metal gauges cause a short otherwise) and also marked with NMRA weights at the proper distance - an all purpose test and program track. I recently confirmed that QSI decoders program fine, I just aquired an Atlas Trainmaster and all I did was set it on my program track and do the normal procedure to set the 4 digit address to the cab number. Put it back on the main and it responded tot eh new address, no longer 3. ABout the only 'extra' is that I do the programming from a DT400, my Zephyr is actually up under the benchwork andnot easily accessible at the moment. Otherwise, I really don't knwo what I do differently that makes my system work and others have problems with an otherwise identical system. --Randy
Randy:
Perhaps an explanation of what you have observed is given in this tech note: http://www.digitrax.com/ftp/tower55/T55%20Tech%20Bulletin%202.1.pdf
One of the footnotes in the piece explains that addressing with the Zephyr itself won't work but if you do it with the Zephyr via a DT400 it will. I've not tried this but I had no luck using my Zephyr and Decoder Pro until I got a SOundtraxx PTB100 booster.
Joe
Entirely possible that the Zephyr alone sends teh CV29 change too fast, which has been mentioned before. I'm not sure how DecoderPro attempts to do it, it if just telsl the command station to set xxxx 4-digit address or tells the command station to set each CV - the throttle would appear to generate each individual program command which could explain why it works. If I get ambitious enough I can test this out by monitoring Loconet via JMRI and see what happens. But since it all works for me... I don't do much program track programming with JMRI, my locos all take pretty basic settings, an address and basic lights, no effects, and I use almost all TCS decoders except for sound lcoos, so by now I have the settings all memorized and it's much quicker to just set the address via throttle. If I program stuff via JMRI such as setting more complex sound stuff, I use the PR3 standalone program track. People have reported problems there as well, particualrly with Tsunamis, so it was with some trepidation that I put the first loco I got with a Tsunami on teh PR3 track at a train show last year and hit the Read All Sheets button in JMRI - to my complete amazement based on all the horror stories, it worked perfectly fine. No booster, no higher voltage power supply, just the PR3 with PS14. So far it has worked fine with various other locos, both mine and other club members'. Even read an 'unreadable' MRC although that one took some finagling as it would not read multiple CVs without timing out, instead I had to highlight a setting in JMRI and read just that one. But it worked.
Sometimes trying to reprogram the address to a 2 digit vs 4 digit goes easier. I use a Zephyr for the Christmas tree(about 3 weeks a year) and use a DT402R for programming.
BTW, most of our programming is done with a DCS200(Zephyr would be fine too) with programming booster(PTB-100) and LOCO NET USB interface for Decoder Pro. In Ops mode or Svc mode.
Richard
Well I got it to work but I'm not exactly sure how. I tried it in blast mode but no dice. Somehow after several tries I managed to get the Athearn to program and was able to set its address. But then no dice again after that when I tried the two Proto 2000's. I finally tried it in PAGED programing mode and was able to set the address and the remaining Proto's. Thanks to everyone for your help. I'm still new to DCC and model railroading in general so I doubt this will be the last you hear of me.
Well, I'm glad you got it to work but I'm still not satisfied . The blast mode should have worked easier than you describe. I forgot to mention - use direct programming
Also instead of using the AD2/AD4 set CV17, CV18, adn then set CV29. Might not even need blast mode then.
For the record I had the same issues with my Zephyr "extra", programming wasn't reliable, I tried all the tricks mentioned, then I picked up a PTB100 from Soundtraxx and I can now program everything. It didn't matter to me about pointing fingers, I had a problem and this took care of my problem.
"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination."-Albert Einstein
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Richard, about a month ago you replied to a post and said: BTW, most of our programming is done with a DCS200(Zephyr would be fine too) with programming booster(PTB-100) and LOCO NET USB interface for Decoder Pro. In Ops mode or Svc mode.
I think that you have finally got me on the right track. I have:
A Proto 2000 F7A with a Tsunami decoder with sound
A digitrax Zephyr
A RR-Cirkits LocoBuffer-USB
Decoder Pro 3
I believe I have everything set up correctly. And Decoder Pro 3 is trying to communicate to my F7A on the zephyr operational track. But when I try perform a New loco discover using Decoder Pro 3 I receive these errors:
Error 301 - No loco discovered
Error 308 no acknowledgement from loco
Doing more research on the web it appears that I know need to purchase the Soundtraxx PTB-100 booster.
From you reply it seems like I’m missing the PTB-100 and that should solve my problem. Before I spend more money I just wanted to bounce this off of you. I’m new to digital and this has really been a learning experience.
Thanks so much for your help.
Try the PR3 in standalone mode, wired to the program track. You need a power supply, mine works fine with a standard PS14 power supply from Digitrax - it read and writes my Tsunami deocder with no problems whatsoever.
FWIW I always use PAGE mode on my programming track (one of the tracks in my staging yard) when programming any engine. I have had no trouble programming Tsunamis.
However, Tsunamis do have a LOT of options, and running Decoder Pro and PR3 does make them a lot easier to set up.
I also use a programing track, the original Zephyr, and a toggle switch to cut power from the layout, so all the power goes to the program track, and have few problems programming. I use Page mode first, and direct mode if the page mode doesn't work.
I use the same setup as Randy and have no problems with any of my sound or non-sound locos. PR3 and Decoder Pro on a separate program track.
-Bob
Life is what happens while you are making other plans!