Handy having a model shop with a good DCC section just down the road, expensive too, second chip purchased and installed, rather than chopping off the NMRA plug I grabbed some sockets, makes it all so much easier and I fold the cables back along the chip and tape up, I've found just the flexing during install can sometimes break the thin wires right next to the solder pad on the chip.
Loaded a new base file in, uploaded sounds and known good motor mapping and off we went, sounds fine, runs well but again the LEDs are always on. Decided to take everything out of the mapping and
the LEDs are on as soon as you select the engine, lights on/off, direction, nothing changes, they're just on, if I add them back in the mapping then they get brighter with lights on and direction, but never go off.
For reference and a cross check, LED wiring, the middle (power) is from the U+ (blue) cable and feeds two 1K resistors in parallel, originally only one per leg, in fact adding the second seems to make them stay on even brighter, sometimes they will flicker and occasionally go off but then flicker back on when mapping applied.
Resistors are added to the + leg of the LED but I'm wondering if they might work better on the - side and help drag down the transistor to turn it off. I can understand why ESU switch the neutral (less current, smaller components) but as I often found on container cranes, sometimes it never switches off cleanly and I'm guessing something like that is happening here....twice.
The other odd thing I've noted is that they flicker when uploading the program, but one is brighter than the other