Possibly Revive A "Bricked" ESU Decoder?

The Indian Rail Modeler of the LokSound groups.io forum summarized a procedure that was originally presented by Peteski of the same group. It involved the possible revival of an apparently "bricked" V5 ESU Decoder. What the word apparently means is that it may be just scrambled not completely unusable.

To accomplish this you will need another known good decoder of the same type i.e. for a micro you'll need another micro, for a 21 pin you'll need another 21 pin, etc. (same version also v4, v5) Also, you'll need to load the sound project into the Programmer. Given these requirements, the procedure consists of the following 5 steps.

1. Take out the non-responsive decoder from the locomotive (or decoder test card)

2. Put a good decoder of the same type into the locomotive (or decoder test card)

3. Read decoder into the lokprogrammer project

4. Switch the good decoder with the non-responsive decoder

5. With the same project open, Re-write the firmware (Tools Menu - Update decoder firmware)

 Try 2 or 3 times if necessary. If it doesnt work after a third try it is probably "bricked".

This procedure is worth a try. At the cost of decoders today, if you can recover one or two you've saved a fair amount of money.

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