The club I belong to uses JMRI to program our locomotives. Well recently we had to upgrade to a new computer, and that's when the troubles began.
We are having difficulty with programming- actually we are having no progress with programming locomotives. JMRI loads and everything, but when it comes time to "read" the locomotive, JMRI always displays the "Error, could not decect locomotive" no matter what decoder is in the unit. The programming track receives power and commands for units already programmed or using DCC address 3. We have checked our connection issues, we have checked our ports, we have a power booster for sound units, and we have checked the track. Nothing is presenting itself as the issue. In fact JMRI/NCE has no idea what is causing this issue either. So, any help would be welcome.
(My Model Railroad, My Rules)
These are the opinions of an under 35 , from the east end of, and modeling, the same section of the Wheeling and Lake Erie railway. As well as a freelanced road (Austinville and Dynamite City railroad).
How is JMRI connected tot he program track? Since you mention NCE and I doubt a club runs on a PowerCab, I asusme yoou have a serial interface to the NCE PowerPro command station.
Likely you have either the wrong serial port selected (for a new computer this almosts has to be a USB to serial adapter cable), or you have not loaded the driver for the USB to serial adapter. Open up Device Manager and then Ports and plug and unplug the cable. The port that comes and goes, that's what you should select in JMRI when it asks for COM port.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
I had this same problem when I got a new laptop with bigger memory. I did my downloads for JMRI, Java and Digitrax PR3. My problem ended up being 2 things. JMRI and Digitrax PR3 were downloaded but not installed. My folders showed them as downloaded but after some frustration, I realized the problem. Now it works fine. Hope this helps.
I'll pass both of these suggestions onto our DCC guy. I'll let you both know how it turned out asap
Update- its fixed
downloaded the JMRI program again and reinstalled...its working great now