Model Railroading > Decoder Pro taking a nap?

I hope that someone here on TO has a suggestion on how to revive my Decoder Pro.  It has been most of a year since I tried to use it and either my  memory  has failed or "they" have changed something.
It is running on an NCE Power Cab with their NCE interface board, going into a Lenovo PC laptop.  Since I converted to DCC in 2014 it has set up about 120 locomotives and adopted another 60 with decoders installed by others, both a local pro and as used off of the web.
Today it refused to identify a new to me decoder (Digitrax DH 127D or work with it at all.  The track connection panels at the bottom of the DecoderPro page said "idle" like it could not communicate with the test track.
The Power Cab could operate it in the basic motor and light functions when I ran ti on the direct link to the track.
I tried a couple of other locomotives that had already been set up in DecoderPro and it still could not identify or work on them while again being able to motor along directly from the PowerPanel.
Has something changed recently?
My first peek into JMRI help pages were a bit intimidating, any ideas where to  look first?
Thanks in advance
RTB

Is your software/firmware up to date?

From reading other discussion sites there are usually problems related to Java updates, as in the programs in the machine and the machine itself have different versions. This is easy to do if the Laptop has automatic updates for Java or JMRI. Theres also the whole Windows 11 thing that could do it as well, technically speaking of course.

I'm hearing about a JMRI specific discussion site, don't remember if it's on facebook or groups io.

fwiw I keep all the updates to manual so as to keep track of what the last working session was. From past experience I try to delay an update, no need to be the first when it comes to Software.
hth.

this is the JMRI group and it is  GREAT.  Lots of help with Decoder Pro

jmriusers@groups.io; on behalf of; Jmriusers Summary [digestnoreply@groups.io]

Mike Stewart
Oakley, CA

I would look at the connections tab in JMRI prefrences to make sure it's still setup for the NCE system.

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

funnelfan Wrote:
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> I would look at the connections tab in JMRI
> prefrences to make sure it's still setup for the
> NCE system.

I would start here before getting into hardware/JAVA/firmware updates which can turn complex quickly.  If you are using any USB to serial converters, it's more likely than not that the COM port has changed.  Use the Windows Device Manager to look to see what your hardware COM ports are, and you may need to update the corresponding values in JMRI preferences to match.

Agree with the COM ports being troublesome, lots of 1980's tech in there. There's also some driver software in there that was a real hassle.

The whole JMRI world is very useful and for those that have some previous exposure it's mostly known technology that can easily be worked with. That said using the Loksound Programmer avoids all of the cobble work and usually gets trains running again. They also have Windows updates issues though.

It's a big hobby and there's lots of rabbit holes to get into. Try not to stress out.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/26/26 11:27 by TCnR.

Thank you for the suggestions, now I have to get to work.