Thanks Tony,
That¡¯s good to know, However, the loco I have is a recently purchased new Hornby 4-4-0 that came with an 8 pin socket, but my decoder is an old Arnold/Rivarossi unit (mfr #173, version #021) which I seem to recall was actually made for them by Lenz. My NCE was able to read the decoder info and also read back the decoders short address during the programming process, my SPROG3/DecoderPro setup could not. You may be right about not being able to use a long address with this decoder, it is very old. I got two of them back in 2005 when I was working for Model Expo, who was the US distributor for Rivarossi & Arnold at the time, and the decoder wasn¡¯t a recent release even then. I also got the NCE/TTX DH102EU decoder at about the same time, it was made for Tony¡¯s Trains by NCE. They all had 8 pin plug & play plugs attached from the factory, and as soon as I can find the box containing most of my HO locos I will have my Atlas DCC-ready U36c chassis that I used for a DCC testbed, so I'll be able to experiment more with the two remaining decoders, which I am sure were working when they were put in the spare parts box. I got my first DCC system (an original Digitrax Challenger - I still have it) back in 1993 and also still have a few locos with decoders from that era. Decoders have come a long way since then and have gotten a lot less expensive as well, those old very basic decoders sold for $40-$50 at the time!
Thanks,
Bill in FtL?
