Hello, i bought 2 Atlas MKT GP-40 in HO Scale. They are equipt with the Atlas Dual-Decoder #342? each. But i cant read the CVs with my Digitrax Zephyr and with Uhlenbrock Intellibox. Also i cant read via Zephyr and JMRi Doftware. On Track the Loco will make a sound like the engine/can runs. but the loco will not run. the directional lightning works well. the "lewer" indide ( means the 6-pin with 2 options to put in ) will not work fine. can anyone help me, do i something wrong ? i dont think, that 2 tatally are broken.
Hi, I have an Atlas B40-8 with the Susquehanna paint scheme, also with the dual-mode decoder. The default setting for the decoder on my B40-8 is DC, and you have to set a jumper on the decoder board to enable it to work with DCC. I think the decoders on your GP40s also need to do the same to make DCC work. If that's the case, the manual should tell you where to find the jumper on the circuit board. Hope this helps!
I have just opened my new Atlas dual-mode B40-8. It is brand new and I am about to set the "plug" for DCC. I am having a little trouble removing the radiator to access the decoder area. Anyone have any thoughts on that? I can't seem to get it open. Also, is this Atlas decoder a good one? I have no experience with it. (In fact, I don't have any experience with any decoder. Heh, heh...) I will try to program it tomorrow on the club Easy DCC computer. Thanks for the help.
I will piggy back on this old thread as I am searching for an answer to my Atlas dual mode factory equipped decoder. I purchased a used HO scale Atlas GP38 master series loco off of Ebay a few months ago. Works great in analog mode. This last week I broke out my Digitrax system to start testing my small HO fleet with DCC. The instructions specify to remove the jumper which I did. The directional ligting responds in DCC but no loco movement. I put the jumper back to switch back to analog operation and the loco works fine in analog mode. Does anyone have any experience with these Atlas locos? I am guessing that the jumper should not be totaly removed to but maybe placed in differnt pin holes?? I do not want to experiment with this and fry the decoder. As a sidenote, I would like to equip this loco with sound in the future. Should I just replace the decoder with a sound equipped decoder now and forget about "fixing" this decoder? What is a good sound solution for a HO Atlas GP38? Thank you in advance.
As a real novice at DCC, here's what I suggest. After you go to DCC mode, you still have to program the engine, otherwise, it operates on the "3" universal code until you program the engine number. I think you also have a default light setting unless you program that, too. As for sound, I would think it would be easiest to get a new sound-equipped PC board. Best to hear from some experts here on TB, though. Correct. It has to be moved over one row of plug-in pins and pressed back into the PC board. My new engine had a diagram to show how this is done.
Just a quick update: I moved the jumper over one set of pins and it works great. Funny, I do not recall the directions stating this. I will have to re-read them to make sure I have not lost my sanity completely Thanks for the advice, it worked!! Matt
