Hi Dave,
Thanks for the reply. I didn¡¯t realize that having two engines on the track would disable the programming attempt, I thought that more than one engine on the program track would reprogram them all. I am using DecoderPro with the SPROG3, the NCE PowerCab is my stand alone System. The program/test track is setup using Kato¡¯s UniTrack and also uses their mini Molex connectors, so I can easily swap between DP/SPROG3, the PowerCab, or even an analog MRC 9500. Both of the decoders in question are quite old (I think I¡¯ve had them for going on 15 years now), and the NCE PowerCab System was able to see, read, and write to at least the Arnold/Rivarossi decoder after a while. I¡¯m pretty sure it¡¯ll be the same with the NCE/TTX decoder too, but I haven¡¯t tried yet because I had gotten sidetracked trying to get DecoderPro to work. Like I said, they are the only decoders I had on hand that were thin enough to fit in the loco, All my other on-hand decoders are too thick to fit, mostly because they all have JST connectors and shrink wrap, which makes them just a bit too thick. Since the engine in question has no lighting, there¡¯s no need for the extra functions found on newer decoders. I would like to have a better motor control with bemf, and possibly an anti-stall capacitor, but realistically, the Hornby loco, even though brand new, is still pretty old tech with its ringfield motor & tender drive, so I¡¯m not sure it would be worth the expense of the latest decoder version.
I¡¯m pretty sure my problem is not the the DP is too old to see the decoders, probably more likely that the decoders are what¡¯s too old! It¡¯s good to know that the Asus convertible should still work with the newer DecoderPro, since I really like that little computer, though I don¡¯t much care for Windows. I thought I had read that the Java version on it was too old for the newer DP. The HP/¡°HackIntosh¡± Netbook uses an early version of Mac OSX that was current right after Apple switched over away from Motorola chips, It uses a third party software to allow the HP Netbook to run an Apple OS, a door which Apple closed pretty quickly. My limited computer experience has been limited to mostly Apple, but I really liked the size of the HP Netbook. The software conversion was done for me by a guy in the IT department at the university where my wife worked. At the time, he said that he had converted a lot of MS computers over to the Mac OS, because Macs were very popular with both instructors and students at the school, but by then, Apple had made any future upgrades to their OS running on a PC impossible. It figures that the DecoderPro V2 graphics would be obsolete, that¡¯s the one I¡¯m more comfortable using!
Thanks,
Bill in FtL
