Thanks for all of your answers. It is a brighter morning. In reading my illegible posts from last night I could tell that my Mike had me real frustrated. I think it might have been a combination of being in one of those vague and rediculous shut down modes, which I believe is overkill, and the wiring plug not making good contact between the loco and tender.
I do have another question for the DCC experienced. Would decoder pro and a test track by my computer help me diagnose these kinds of problems quicker?
Anyone familiar enough with the NCE Powercab to know how I would do this? I think the NCE USB interface goes in there somewhere.
Again thanks for the help.
You knew enough to make sure it wasn't in shut-down, so good for you! Many miss this step.
It seems that BLI tether plugs are often not seated thoroughly, as Ken has pointed out. You need to take a very fine, thin set of needle-nosed pliers, open them enough to place a tine end beside the outermost wires where they enter the back face of the plug, and press that sucker home! Make sure you are holding the engine securely and carefully so you don't break tiny details, but you have to use some force to seat the tether fully in the receptacle. That accounts for about 60-70% of all problems getting the loco to move when it still makes sounds.
Crandell
Is this a QSI decoder?
I had a similar problem with a Proto 0-6-0 a few months back. I tried all the reset tricks. I tried the "magic wand" magnetic reset. I even took the tender apart and hot-wired across the magnetic reed switch in case that was faulty.
Finally, I took it to my LHS. He's got a QSI programmer unit on the shop computer, and he was able to do a full reset with that, something I hadn't been able to do. It took 3 resets before everything was back the way it should be.
No charge. Support your LHS.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
In DC mode the dings means they are getting to much power if I remember correctly. Been a while for me and DC.
First thing I look at with my BLI engines is the tender plug. If I can make sounds like blow the whistle and the engine will not move, plug is not in all the way. But I think the same thing may happen in Shut Down Mode, which I don't use. All wise afraid I will not get one going again.
You can all so change CV 8 to 8 to reset the decoder.
I never unplug my BLI / PCM steamers unless I am taking one to the club layout.
Cuda Ken
I hate Rust
It is hard to recreate what the exact sequence of events were from your description. But it does sound like you did do some re-programming, or maybe not. I do know from fooling around with some club member's BLI engines that also "wouldn't run" that it seems to be necessary to break contact between the engine and the rails for about a minute after doing any major resetting. This seems to give the decoder time to digest the new information it has been given. Possibly when you removed the loco from the tracks to take the boiler off you accomplished the contact-breaking operation.
Hello again,
Well I went back up and took the boiler off everything seemed OK. Put it back on the track fired up the powercab called up the long address and she runs like nothing ever happened.
Are these ghosts in the machine indicative of what I a getting into with DCC?
Thanks
SB
By the way this is on of the early run Mikado's that BLI did two years ago.
Hello,
Just when I decide to go go full bore DCC I seem to have a problem with one of my bli light mikes. It has been running fine on my NCE Powercab. It even ran fine last Friday after I decaled it for the Mopac. But tonight things steamrolled into a dead loco. When I first put it on the track it would not do anything but sit there with the headlight on. I though maybe it was in one of the three shut down modes, but after cycling through them several times, I could never get it to move it would sit there and steam. I also tried it on DC and the sounds would come on but it would not move. At about 80 throttle I did here two bell dings?, don't know what that meant.
When I went back to DCC I could not get it to do anything. My NCE did call a short circuit and shut down. I checked for a track short circuit by running another DC and DCC locomotive around the track. Track was fine. I then tried the jumper reset but did not here any whistles, or anything. I do hear what seems to be the motor buzzing in there.
Is there anything else I should try or should I call BLI?