Good afternoon,
A few months ago, I purchased a Digitrax Zephyr xrta, DCS51 and a DY402 series Super Throttle. I wired it up an all worked fine and life was good.
As I am a member of the local model railroad club, I took one of my locos and the Dt402 to the clubs layout and had a great experience.
However, upon returning to my home layout, I started encountering problems. After about 5 minutes of operation, the DCS51 started flashing “FULL”, so I went to page 38 in the manual, section 21.0 and ran the Ops 36 procedure. Then I reprogrammed the loco on the programming track, and checked the CV_RD to insure the address was OK. Put the loco on the regular track, and everything went south, no throttle, no emergency stop, nor response from the power button on the DCS51 and the little green break light was not lit up. However the locos on the track all started up, but I could not control them.
So, I figured I screwed up so I ran the Ops 39 to reset the DCS51 to its original factory setting. The reprogrammed a loco and the same old problems showed up again.
I cannot turn the system off using the power button, so I have to unplug it to stop it. So I set up and wired another small track and hooked up the DCS51 to the test track and encountered the same situation.
I do not know what to do next and am ready to send the DCS51 back for repair. Please advise what I should try before returning the system for a warranty check up.
If pressing the power button does not turn the track power light on (and it should NOT be green, it should be orangish-red, unless you are trying to run a DC loco on address 0), and using the factory reset procedure to via OpSw 39 has not fixed things, then there's probably not much else you can do but send it in for repairs. SOunds like they may have had a bad batch with the chip that drives the track output failing. It's only sending out half the DCC wave which accounts for the green track power light and the locos tking off - they think it's DC power.
Once you get it back, a coupel of pointers:
1. Look up options for CV29. Always turn off the automatic analog conversion (DC mode) in your decoders, unles you absolutely need to run them on DC at a friend's house or something. This will keep them from taking off in the event of a problem.
2. When you are done using a loco, if runnign it on the DT402, make sure it is stopped (speed 0 showing) and press Loco and exit to dispatch it. If runnign ont he Zephyr's throttle, make sure it's stopped, and set the direction switch to the brake position. Press loco and then exit to dispatch it. This will keep you from seeing the FULL error on the Zephyr, by properly removing locos you are done running.
3. When doing the OpSw 36 reset to clear all loco information from the Zephyr's memopry, you do NOT need to reprogram the loco decoder. Resetting the Zephyr does not wipe out the programming in the decoder.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Hey Randy, sound familiar?
HudsonRR - I had a similar problem a few weeks ago. After months of trouble free operation, turned on power and all locos took off at full speed, even with throttle at zero. However, I was able to shut things down with the power button. My DCS51 would flash a green light and a zero would scroll across the bottom.
I tried all the same things you did (resetting OpSw39) with no luck. I contacted Digitrax and Randy (our resident expert) and it is now vacationing in Florida. Hope it brings me back a t-shirt after it's vacation.
Inspired by Addiction
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Before you send it back, I would try re-setting the Zephyr to eliminate the "FULL" notice. As noted, that only affects the Zephyr, not your engine.
Then I'd take the engine and put it on your programming track in Page mode and try reading back both the long and short address. Don't read the CVs - with the Zephyr, when you first enter Page mode, if you hit the LOCO button you can use it to scroll between choosing 2 and 4 digit address. Then "read" both and see what both of them are.
Some decoders are factory set to only use 2 digit IDs, up to IIRC an ID of 127. You have to set CV 29 to a certain number to allow 4 digit addressing. It might be in doing the factory re-set you changed CV 29 so it doesn't allow longer addresses, or it could be that the short and long addresses are conflicting.
You could maybe try re-setting both addresses to "3" ("03" and "0003") and see if the engine then works on address 0003.