<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type"> </head> <body text="#000000" bgcolor="#ffffff"> Tony, Guenther is the expert. Has a programmer and everything for use with all their decoders. Sells decoders too. You tell him which loco and he will load the correct sound file. I just put LokSound Select decoders and LokSound speakers in two ATSF C44-9W's and programmed them today. Great sound and they work well. The only problems was with the club computer. That computer we have driving the Decoder Pro program is really not all that good. It gets stuck and you have to kill the program and start over. It takes a long time to fire up and even longer to shut down. We need a new computer to run the program. At least with the Select decoder, Decoder Pro seems to work ok. Since we are rapidly moving more and more away from analog, we do need some session(s) on how to program a decoder. I use NCE for all my non-sound decoders and they all program pretty much the same. It is the sound ones that can be tricky. One word of caution. Athearn's first releases with sound decoders were those MRC ones. They stink and are nothing but trouble. I replaced those with LokSound deocers and still have one to go. The revamped locos work really well and sound great. Some members will say," but I have a bunch of Athearn blue box locos". If they run on the club layout, they are required to have NWSL wheel sets instead of the old Athearn wheels. Maybe the latest blue box had better wheels, but I don't know. These can be convered to "Plug and Play" DCC with a part available from Athearn. For much less than the cost of a new loco, you can convert a number of the blue box locos to DCC. Even a LokSound sound decoder if you desire. The club has 2 or 3 DCC Athearn blue box locos, in demo colors, that have been converted. No one has used them that I know of. They are in the next drawer down from the drawer most people look in first. This leads to another item we need to discuss. We need rules and guidelines for use of the club DCC locos. From simple things like "when you finish using one of the locos, clear the consist". I have had several locos put in the "to fix" box and the only thing wrong with them were they still had a consist number. Clear the consist and they worked fine. See attached. Dean On 12/9/2016 8:11 PM, ACCRS HO Scale wrote: <blockquote cite="mid:mailman.91.1481343119.13580.accrs-ho@mail.accrs.org" type="cite"> <pre wrap="">Message From: Tony Long <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:tony.long@outlook.com">tony.long@outlook.com</a> </pre> <fieldset class="mimeAttachmentHeader"></fieldset> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"> <style type="text/css" style="display: none;"></style> <div id="divtagdefaultwrapper" style="font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" dir="ltr"> Today we had a model that contained a LokSound decoder that needed to be reprogrammed. Using the NCE 'program on the main' or the JMRI Decoder Pro programmer was not effective in making changes. Early LokSound were somewhat proprietary in design - to program these decoders you need to LokSound programmer device. I've heard that the LokSound Select decoders are more "friendly" with DecoderPro. A couple of recommendations for the club - 1.) We need more education and skills working with LokSound decoder 2.) Might need to have the LokSound programmer device incorporated into the "programming station" Also, be aware that more manufacturers are using LokSound than ever before - the latest Athearn announcements mentioned LokSound to be used in their UP 4-8-4, Intermountain has adopted them in all their models, Atlas is adopting them, Rapido is using them, Walthers. Looks like it's time to include support for this at the club. Question - Who are the LokSound experts in the club that can help provide education and skill training for this, and provide suggestions on what we need to purchase, if anything, to support re-programming decoders? Tony </div> <pre wrap=""> <fieldset class="mimeAttachmentHeader"></fieldset> _______________________________________________ Accrs-ho mailing list <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:Accrs-ho@mail.accrs.org">Accrs-ho@mail.accrs.org</a> <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://mail.accrs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/accrs-ho">https://mail.accrs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/accrs-ho</a> </pre> </blockquote> </body> </html>