I have a collection of Gauge 1 locos of varying vintages. I normally have converted them to run on Marklin Motorola data. However since being treated by an over indulgent wife to a Ecos I can run DCC which theoretically controls the late 1980's/early 1990's original digital locos.

If I have the original instructions then I have had some success. For example with driving the BR80 museum model with DCC. It twitches when some instructions as broadcast but basically it runs and the lights are controllable. However if I do not have the instructions it is difficult to make it work as the options are broken, needs TLC or need to try 80 addresses until it moves. Does anybody know of a source of the original addresses? And possibly even how to reprogramme, without buying the original Marklin kit of parts, from an Ecos?

I have had very good result upgrading Maxi engines to HO Lokpilots fixed to a piece of Veroboard cut to size to fit in the original holder and plug in the original connector. I can show how if anybody is interested. I suspect a Maxi loco with 4 trucks is not a large load.

AC locos behave well enough with a pair of diodes on the field magnet and a lokpilot or lokpilot XL for larger locos.

However it would be good to keep the original 1980's locos intact if they will talk to a modern controller.

I know this is the best place to ask from the help I have received in the past.

Graham

Tom, you mean you have some old LE900's in some Roco locs?

As Tom says, usually the Lenz DCC decoders are programmed to DCC address 3 by default. But if the manufacturer or user has reprogrammed it, not so easy to guess. CV1 is the DCC primary address of the decoder, and if you have a controller that can read CV's you should get the right address from there. Just be sure that the loco is alone on the track or on the programming track while doing it.

Graham, have you tried the original Marklin DCC 1980's Lenz programmer (fits onto the 6030 DCC Central unit) With this programmer a booklet was supplied that described how to programme these original G1 Lenz decoders. You can change A. the address in CV 1, (1-99) and B. only the acceleration and deceleration CV's in these older units.

Alternatively, if using a modern DCC controller (Ibox or Ecos) then try writing to the CV only without reading it. Error messages may arise, and no read out values may be accessable, but WRITE usually works despite the error messages and the new value gets posted in the CV. Make sure the loco is the only thing on the track.

Even if all this works, I have always found that these older Lenz units work horribly, and arent worth spending too much time on, other than to keep the loco in its perfect original condition. When running on a modern DCC controller, Lenz's 1;32 scale usually accelerate OK but stop suddenly from about speed step 5 to zero and behave erratically. Ugly. Why dont you fit an ESU XL or HO decoder and be done with it!! Peter