posneg6 Posted July 14, 2018 Share Posted July 14, 2018 I have been using the excelent z21 system for a few weeks and it has been flawless,until I tried to read the cv#1 on a few older decoders, I made a decoder tester with a 12 volt dc moter and a few LEDs (see pic) it's basic but has been working fine for about 4 older decoders mainly NCE. the last few days I had great success programming an older NCE N14SR with an orange SME LED to work on the white wire and programmed it as fire flicker. all good for a couple of hours running over a few days, then that loco just stopped and shorted the sytsem!I tested the decoder on my home made tester and managed to reset it to factory default and started again. no joy at all, I reset to the CV1 of my choice but it would not respond, all I got was a short circuit. I think it has blown up . tried a few more older chips with the same problem they would sometimes work then short circuit I have an LED on my decoder tester that indicates that the programme track is live and as soon as I try to read the decoder CV3! it flashes then the current from the track stops but does not indicate a short on the z21 light stays green. I have reset the z21 and quit the app and I still can't read any of those decoders! beginning to think something is quite wrong somewhere. I tried changing the prog track voltage to 12 but no joy. any suggestions would be appreciated. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
WIMorrison Posted July 14, 2018 Share Posted July 14, 2018 Are you using Railcom? These old decoders may not be compatible with Railcom and if you don't use it then you should switch it off in the Z21. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
posneg6 Posted July 14, 2018 Author Share Posted July 14, 2018 Are you using Railcom? These old decoders may not be compatible with Railcom and if you don't use it then you should switch it off in the Z21.strangely I had it switched of but somehow it switched it self back on when I reset the z21 so I have turned it off again and yes it did cause me a lot of problems before. but I darent try reading any more decoders I think it has fried 6!that were previously OK. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
WIMorrison Posted July 14, 2018 Share Posted July 14, 2018 The default is for Railcom to be activated on the Z21 and as you say it was reset to on when you reset the z21 Unfortunately the only way you will find out if this was the root of your problem is …. to test a suspect type of decoder Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
posneg6 Posted July 15, 2018 Author Share Posted July 15, 2018 Are these settings on the app correct? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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