hello all since a few days i have some really strange issues with my dcc system. here's my setup : digitrax dcs200 as command station / booster powering mainlines 1 and 2 digitrax dcs200 set as booster, powering yard digitrax db200 booster, powering turnouts only now the strange behaviour. i have several lifelike and atlas engines with tcs cn-gp decoders. they act really weird. after running for some time they suddenly start backing up for a few inches, then forward a few inches, backwards, forwards, backwards, forwards. if i tilt the locos (lift the wheels off from one rail), rerail them they run smooth again. just to act weird again a few minutes later. all engines with digitrax decoders run fine. no issues at all. tcs m1 equipped locos work fine. analog conversion is turned on on all tcs decoder. turning it off makes it worse. i really have no clue what could be wrong. after some testing i think i can nail it down to one of the dcs200. i did check the settings cv2 = c for booster, t for command station. also cv5 is set to 'c' as recommended by digitrax. it might be that the battery in one of the dcs200 is dead. could this cause these issues ? as said, it all jus happens with tcs cn-gp decoders (albeit they all have been running perfect in the past). i really need help with this one.
not a digitrax user personally, but I did belong to a club that had digitrax. A problem we found with some decoders in HO scale was, loco 00 on digitrax. That DC control mode thing. Some decoders were affected when loco 00 was selected and in use. Some didn't care. Try selecting loco 00 and making sure that its off.
I have also had random problems with my TCS CN and CN-GP decoders on the digitrax system at our club. My problems tend to be a little different. Sometimes a loco will take off backwards at full speed for a few seconds. Another problem is the loco goes dead, and it usually turns out that it has reset itself to 2 digit addressing. Changing analog mode makes no difference for me, which might mean my problems are not the same as yours. Geep_fan's suggestion is interesting and I may try it when I have an opportunity. We also have common rail with pulse-width-modulation on our layout and I have speculated that this may contribute to the problems, but I have no evidence to back that up. Bottom line, I have been disappointed with the CN series decoders and have decided to avoid using more of them where there are other good options. However if you can come up with any leads on digitrax settings that seem to help, that might change my mind.
Have you monitored the Loconet to see if anything is happening on the throttle bus side? Anything look "funny" in the slot tables of the CS? Have you verified that the TCS decoders are set for 28/128 speed steps? Curious.... Doug Stuard
i don't see any commands on the loconet except for what i do on the throttle. slot table just holds the very single address of the loco. no others. not even '0'. decoders are correctly set to 28/128 steps. tried different settings : - bemf on/off - analog conversion on/off - combinations of the two. still acting crazy.
Hi guys, new here. We just set up an around the ceiling track in my brothers rec room. After he'd played with it for 2 days, he called me up to report this very same problem. He's running a digitrax zephyr and a bachmann EM-1 with sound chip. Resetting the zephyr did nothing but removing/replacing the engine brought it back to normal. I haven't seen this personally but, this thread caught my eye. Oh, he'd also tried power cycling the zephyr, didn't solve the trouble. I'm very curious if anyone else has seen this behavior in engines/decoders on dcc. tnx scotty
Try resetting the Command Station to factory defaults. Since you're using a DCS200 as a booster only, make sure the battery is good and make sure the booster only DCS200 is still a booster. Rich
You didn't mention which throttles are being used. If the same address is selected on more then one UT(potentiometer style) throttle and/or a DTxxx (encoder style) throttle you will see the type of behavior posted. Resetting the command station as Rich posted will solve the problem until the same address gets selected on two throttles again. Best way to avoid is to properly dispatch each address. Martin Myers
