Originally Posted by: ShannonN 
Does NOT say **Digital Ready** says **HAS** digital decoder, my understanding is if it has a digital decoder its a DCC loco and NOT analogue
Perhaps I'm a dumb ass in a sea of experts familiar with Marklin train speak,
but . . . I'll never learn unless I ask
Thanks for the link
Blessings Shanny
Others have already pointed out that Marklin digital is not DCC, but I will give a bit of a list of alternatives.
DCC (derived from Digital Command and Control) is a registered trademark I believe, or may be just copyright, of the NRMA (National Model Railroad Association, a USA based association that has set up a number of standards for model railroad items, and DCC is one of their standards). Hence when a person refers to DCC it is taken as read that they are referring to a control system compatible with this.
However there are also a number of other systems that also give digital control of a model railroad,. One is known as Marklin Motorola which was originally based around a set of chips made by the Motorola Semiconductor company in the USA, that were designed for things like garage door remotes and such like. in the early 1980s Marklin devised a system whereby they could use this protocol as a digital control system for their products, and while the loco decoder used a custom chip, the accessory decoders for points and signals used the Motorola chip in them. The original 6020 digital controller also uses a Motorola chip to encode the signal.
After a couple of years Marklin found they needed more facilities than the Motorola system could provide, so they modified the protocol using some redundant features, and this became known as 'MM2' or Marklin Motorola 2. The loco decoders are backwards compatible with the original 6020 control unit, but the only function available is to turn the headlight off and on. The 6021 controller can use all the additional 4 functions available in the MM2 protocol.
Around 10 or so years ago Marklin introduced a totally new system called mfx which has the capability for 16 functions on the loco, but had the totally new feature of having a bi-directional protocol so the loco could tell control unit just what functions it has, and so no setting up of address or any other feature of the loco is required. This new protocol required new control units, and Marklin introduced two, one called a mobile station and the other called a central station. The mobile station is an entry level control unit with only 8 functions controllable, that could be included in start sets, while the central station is the fully fledged control unit that can be expanded in functionality. Marklin also did a cunning hting in designed the mobile station so it could be plugged into a central station to be used as an extra throttle control, meaning that a person starting out with a mobile station did not need to get rid of it when expanding the layout control with a central station, but could still make use of the mobile station. The original mobile station and central station are now known as ms1 and cs1 respectively, as newer and more capable models of both were introduced about two years after the introduction of the ms1 and cs1. All the mfx controllers can also control MM and MM2 decoders, so the backwards capability is still there.
However the early days of digital control also spawned a number of other digital control systems, although most of these have almost died out. Trix had a system called Selectrix and Fleischmann had a system called FMX. There were also others from other manufacturers. You will often find that decoders can often be set up to use these other systems as well as DCC, mfx or MM2.
However as none of these other systems are compatable with DCC, they cannot use the DCC logo or nomenclature. This doesn't stop people like eBay sellers describing marklin items as DCC, even though they are not. Technically they are making an illegal statement.
The confusion over DCC is made even more confusing by many modern controllers being able to generate several of the protocols I have mentioned above, e.g. the ms2 and cs2 can both be set up to generate DCC messages as well as MM and mfx, allowing many decoders from multiple systems to still be used. many decoders such as the new Marklin ones and ESU Lokpiot and Loksound ones can also understand multiple systems including DCC. So when refitting a loco with a decoder there are a number of decisions to be made about how all the equipment is to be set up, so that things work without the decoder becoming confused about which protocol it thinks it is using. For this reason you will see mentions in various threads on this forum about 'turning off' this protocol or that protocol on the control unit or in a decoder.
Hope this helps make things a little clearer for you.
