No Decoder ACK pulse

[APC]

Please accept my apologies if this is not the appropriate place to raise my issue, but I have been directed to this forum via a response from Frizinghall Models and Railways in their response to my email which went out as follows on the 28th September, 2023:-

Graham Farish Class 90/0 90004 City Glasgow Virgin Original Livery, Product Reference 371-783SF.

Dear Frizinghall Models and Railways,

Last December, I took delivery of a Graham Farish Class 90/0 90004 City Glasgow Virgin Original Livery, Product Reference 371-783SF, from you.

Today, it stopped dead and appears to have died. When I put it my programming track, it could not be recognized and my hand-held controller, on trying to read the locos address, could only get the message ‘No Decoder ACK pulse !’.

Can you please tell me what this might mean and what I need to do to regain access to the CVs?

I look forward to hearing from you, thank you and take care, Andy Pearson….

If someone could re-direct me if necessary to where I should have sent this email, I would be most obliged.

On the other hand, if someone here on the forum can advise me regarding this issue, I would be equally obliged.

One way or another, I look forward to hearing from someone, in the meantime, thank you for your attention, take care, Andy....

[Steve M]

Usual questions first:
Which decoder are you using?
Which control system?
Have you tried a full reset by writing cv8 to a value of 8?

[bulleidboy]

Genuine question Steve - but if he cannot gain access to the cv's - will he be able to access CV8? Is there a short-cut?

[jed10]

This is a sound fitted Farish N guage model so it has an ESU Loksound V5DDC fitted.

It is a Next18 decoder so probably the first thing is to check and see if the decoder has become unseated from the socket. Once you've opened up the body (instructions how to do this will have been supplied with the loco) carefully remove the decoder and then carefully push it back into its socket firmly. Put it back on the program track (no need to replace the body shell just yet) and hopefully it will now work.

If that doesn't fix it then put a blanking plug into the N18 socket in place of the decoder and see if it runs ok on a 12v dc layout. If it does then there's a problem with the decoder so send it back for hopefully a warranty replacement. If it still doesn't work then there may be a problem with pick ups (unlikely on a newish loco) or a pcb fault so would still need sending back under warranty.

Good luck and let us know how you get on.

[APC]

Hi folks, thanks for the quick reply.

The decoder is a Loksound V5 DCC Next 18 according to the literature in the box.

The control system is a Digitrax DCS 210+ using LocoNet and a DT602DE hand-held throttle.

As for cv8, I haven’t tried that, but I’m with Bulleidboy there, unless there’s a short-cut, I don’t know how to get in. On top of that, I’ve heard stories of losing the sound files in some cases if you do that. As such, even if I could get in to cv8, I’d be reluctant to try that in case I lost these, unless I had some form of re-assurance that that wouldn’t happen. Is there a way to backup the sound files, or everything else on the decoder for that matter, and then reload them in the case of such an event?

While I've been writing this, another post has come in from jed10 with a few suggestions to try, which I will do in a minute, but I wanted to get this reply back to you as well.

Thanks again, Andy….

[APC]

Hi Guys,

Thank you Jed10, I have now gone through the suggestions you made. I took out the decoder and put it back in, it didn’t make any difference, the loco still didn’t work. I took the decoder out and put in the dc blank, on dc, the loco ran this way and that without any problems. These results do indeed, therefore suggest that the decoder is at fault.

Unless anyone has any other ideas, tomorrow, Tuesday, I will try to make contact again with Frizinghall and find out what they recommend. Meanwhile, given that my previous email to Frizinghall sent me here to this forum, maybe someone from Frizinghall will pick up on this thread and respond appropriately. If not, I’ll let you know how I get on if I can get in touch with them some other way.

Thank you again for your attention, take care, Andy….