Model Railway Forum

Hey guys,

So I’ve been fitting a bulk of my locks with decoders. Some 8 pin and some 21 pin. All are working, however one chip I fitted, is giving me grief.

It’s a 21 pin decoder which I have fitted in a deltic by Bachmann called Pinza. I have issued it with a number just like all the others, but when I turn the dial it doesn’t move.

I have placed it on the program track and my controller is picking it up- guagemaster prodigy.

All of my other locos work fine and it operates without fault on DC.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks,

Chris

Some times you need to try more than once to set a address, so try again if that fails reset decoder back to factory setting ( cv 8 to 8 ) it will then be set at address 3, try loco and see if it moves.

My advice would be to check it for operation on address 03 to confirm if it has accepted your new address or not.

Just a thought - is your given address within allowable range of the controller.

Chrishans wrote: ↑Sat Sep 12, 2020 8:45 pm Hey guys,

So I’ve been fitting a bulk of my locks with decoders. Some 8 pin and some 21 pin. All are working, however one chip I fitted, is giving me grief.

It’s a 21 pin decoder which I have fitted in a deltic by Bachmann called Pinza. I have issued it with a number just like all the others, but when I turn the dial it doesn’t move.

I have placed it on the program track and my controller is picking it up- guagemaster prodigy.

All of my other locos work fine and it operates without fault on DC.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks,

Chris

Hi
You say your controller is "picking it up".... Do you mean your are able to read back the decoders address number?
Can you turn the lights On/Off?
What is CV3 Acceleration rate set to? If its a high value number it will take the loco ages to move off. Read CV3 value and set it to 1 if its high. Then retest loco.
If the answer is No to the above or CV3 is already a low value, I would carefully check that all 21 pins have entered the decoders socket correctly (One or more pins haven't been bent over), you should be able to see each pin in its socket. Also check the motor wiring from the PCB is intact too.

Next, assuming the two checks above are correct, can you reset the decoder to default with CV8 value of 8 this will restore its to address number 03 too. Does it now work on address 3?

Brian,

I will check the acceleration rate this afternoon. I’m using the gaugemaster prodigy controller and when I read the decoder, I just get the screen to input a new decoder number - no error message.

As an experiment I put the decoder into another model and I still wasn’t getting a response.

I do have another question, a couple of locos are moving off quite quickly even when I’m using the lowest speed on the maximum speed step of 128. I’m assuming this could be related to the speed step too? Or are there any other possible reasons to this? Cheers

For the jump start problem check CV2 (V-start) is not set above 1.

It is possible to ham-fistedly insert a 21-pin decoder upside down, even though there is a blank locator pin. In a model this is unlikely to be possible as the decoder ends up 180 degrees out as well as upside down and usually there would not be enough room in a loco to achieve this.

As RAF96 says check CV2 and set it to 1 or 2 maximum. (The higher the number the faster it will move on speed steep 1.)

BTW which Prodigy do you have? Express or Advanced 2

You mention that all the other loco's work on DC so are you trying to run the problem loco on DC or DCC? If DC then you need to add 4 to cv 29.

As the OP is using the Gaugemaster Prodigy (either Express or Advanced 2) then neither permit DC operation via address 0 (zero). I think the OP missed off a 'C' when they typed DC, it should have been I feel DCC???

Hi Brian,

The short section of track I use as my programme track, I just attached the DC connector to it - I didn’t solder it or anything, I literally just slipped in the connector to my Hornby DC controller. I didn’t check it in the week as I had planned as I got caught up with other things. Today is a day of troubleshooting. Will get back either tonight or tomorrow about what the issue is.