Programming DCC engine problem

I bought an Walthers engine from a swap meet that had a dcc card and sound added to a non DCC ready engine. I have an Atlas Commander DCC system and I'm running a DCC engine without any problems.

I tried to program the swap meet engine and can't get it to work. When doing the steps, the current address isn't returned and I get an error

  1. Ok, so big deal, so what do I do now? Can I test the DCC board that is in the engine now? Do I simply replace it?

I put my original engine on the programming track and it programs as advertised without any problem.

Thanks for any help Mike

Reply to
mmikemitchell
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snipped-for-privacy@comcast.net spake thus:

You may already have thought of this, but could you swap the known good DCC decoder into the swap-meet loco and see if it works? Sounds like a bad decoder to me.

Reply to
David Nebenzahl

Mike, Many (most?) sound decoders have higher current requirements, even for programming, than non-sound decoders. Often the DCC system will see this as a short and refuse to program them.

Even folks with top-of-the-line DCC systems sometimes buy add-on such as the PowerPax to enable the programming of sound decoders.

It may be that your Commander system just isn't up to the task.

My suggestion would be to find someone (friend, hobby shop, local club, etc.) who has successfully programmed sound decoders with their DCC system, and let them have a go at programming yours.

HTH&GL, Stevert

Reply to
Stevert

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