Hi everyone,

I have been adding my locomotives to CS3 recently and one Roco locomotive has been particularly annoying.

I originally programmed the locomotive as DCC and set the address using the programming track.

What seems to be happening is that the CS3 is persistent with adding the locomotive as an MFX format. I tried looking at the settings but just can’t find any option to turn this off.

I have another Roco locomotive that is relatively new that works really well as DCC, just this one is just not working as it should.

Has anyone had any similar issues?

Hi,

The Roco locomotive that works without any problems is a small SNCF diesel for shunting (no. 78011). The one cause me issues is an OBB electric locomotive, class 1044 (no. 78432).

Both locomotives are very recent, within the last 6 months. This is the first opportunity for me to start using them as I am still working on my layout.

I have just reset the locomotive decoder and it seems to working ok, the CS3 hasn’t tried adding it again.

I was just curious to see if anything else has the same problems out there.

Hi Eddie
Here is the little I know (I have a CS3 and many multi-protocol locos.
- The CS3 is capable of dealing with MFX, DCC, MM, MM2 and MFX+ formats and it does all of them as long as you don't disable some of the formats on the CS3
- The multi-protocol decoders use (at least the Märklin ones) MFX as a top priority, then DCC then MM2 / MM
- If a multi-protocol loco is registered with DCC, if its MFX format is allowed, then, the CS3 will register the loco ALSO in MFX format and because of the priority, the MFX orders will be considered, normally ignoring the DCC ones.
- To avoid this, then you must disable - on the loco's decoder - the MFX format
- Failure to do this may result is bizarre fonctioning.

Bizarre fonctioning
A loco may be registered (with a CS3) two or three times (one MFX, one DCC and one MM2 as different locos (from the CS3 viewpoint) and so the loco may receive CONFLICTING ORDERS: e.g.: the MFX is to go forward medium speed, the DCC is to go reverse, full speed, the MM2 is to stop.
On Märklin multi protocol loco decoders (all recent M locos are), there is a priority mechanism that gives preference to MFX, then DCC last MM2. All is fine as long as the current pick-up is good. When it is not, the loco may switch to DCC or even MM2 and so there is a possibility for the loco to obey conflicting orders.
For this reason, you may want to disable on the loco, all unused protocols.

For fun, here is an ESU multi-protocol LokSound 5 micro decoder (MFX, DCC, MM2) on a multi-protocol CS3. I used it because of smaller size than Märklin mSD3.
Because I use MFX, I don't have to disable any protocol on the loco and on the CS3


All is a matter or personal opinion. Mine is, on a CS3, MFX protocol is so much better especially on Märklin decoders

Cheers
Jean

Hi Jean,

Thank you for the explanation, I have been doing some research about the Roco Zimo decoder and looks like they have MFX capability. So this is why it keep automatically adding to the CS3.

The annoying thing now is how it only shows 8 functions when the the locomotive has so much more. I’d like to switch off MM and MFX protocol on the decoder but I can’t seem to find out how to do it.

Interestingly, I can still access all functions when operating the locomotive using Rocrail.

I’ll just have to keep researching!

Regards,

Eddie

Hi Eddie
This is quite normal as Rocrail uses a CS2 or CS3 only as a slave, converting the RR orders into MFX/DCC/MM2 orders

for instance the duration of solenoid activation: whatever is on the CSx, RR will command the duration independently.
Cheers
Jean

Hello
For DCC use the CS3 load a limited set of CV's everytime, the most used ones.
To work with a CV that it is not preloaded, you must load it in the template.
For that click on the 3 lines at the upper right corner, a menu will appear, you will finf the "add CV" oprtion, if you click it a new CV will appear in the template, there you need to enter number 12, CS3 will read that CV and you will be able to modify it.
It is a good practice to save the modified template everytime you modify CV's so for later modification you only have to load it and not do the whole process of adding cv's everytime.
Hope it helps
Francisco

Happy you make it work!!