August 26, 1998

Digitrax Wireless

In order for the Digitrax wireless components to function properly, the red and green wires, the center two conductors in the six wire Loco Net cable, must be shorted. The Loco Net is designed for the red and green pair and the yellow and black pair to be redundant. Any throttle plugged in to the Loco Net will short the red and green and the black and yellow pair. If you are operating with one wireless DT100R and no other throttles are plugged in, the red and green are shorted when the DT100R is plugged in but become unshorted when the DT100R is removed for wireless operation. Then the wireless feature will not operate.

The remedy is to have another throttle plugged in or short the green and red pair that come with the system's test kit. Or simply make or buy a four or six conductor cable with the modular plugs installed, remove one modular plug and short the red and the green.

Digitrax/Soundtraxx 4 digit address incompatibility

When using the Soundtraxx digital sound decoder (steam or diesel) in the 4 digit address range with a Digitrax Chief, a compatibility problem develops. If an operations mode programming instruction is broadcast to the digital sound decoder using the 4 digit address, the digital sound decoder will lock up and go brain dead and only be recoverable by power cycling the Digitrax command station or by reprogramming the DSD for 2 digit address operation.

The cause is unknown but is being explored by Soundtraxx and does not occur when the DSD is used with other systems or when other 4 digit EPF decoders are used with the Digitrax system. The simple remedy for Digitrax users operating their DSDs is to use the 2 digit address range only.