Does anybody think thats Lionel’s Tmcc legacy is a responce to MTH’s dcs? The controllers look A LOT alike and the new tmcc will have a lot more features, which makes me think, did lionel come up with this as a direct reponce to MTH’s DCS? I’m just curious.
Grayson
Grayson, this can start an arguement TMCC is great and so is DCS. I remember when there was nothing but conventional and everyone was “longing” for remote control. TMCC2 is an improvement over TMCC and, I’ll bet, ther will be a newer vesion of DCS. The electronics field is advancing so fast, upgardes to everything happens daily.
I run both systems. As far as a direct response to DCS. Yes the remotes are a little more similar with Legacy featuring a screen. The big change is not that the remotes are now more similar. It’s the speed steps in the engines. 200 speed steps versus the present 32. Each speed step will increase the engines speed 1/2 scale mile per hour. If I’m understanding this right top speed would be 100 smph. What all this means is that those running lashups with the newer Legacy engines will no longer have engines fighting one another with speed control. Each and every engine will accelerate exactly the same. This I feel is the biggest improvement. The Proto 2’ s have always had this feature in SMPH. What all this means is that the MTH DCS system only presently supports 32 speed steps. Train America developed a workaround using the brake and boost button to be able to run in 132 step mode with the DCS remote. So it looks like if you buy a new TMCC legacy and plan to run it with the DCS system as many opperators presently do. You will have a top speed of 16 SMPH. You can still run with your present Cab 1 with a lot of knob turning but you are pretty much out of luck at the present time to run the new Lionel releases with the DCS system from what I’m reading. Until these are actually on the market a lot of my post is speculation from what I’ve read. An upgrade in the DCS software may solve the issue. It wasn’t done when K-Line entered the cruise field with 128 steps nor was it for EOB. I guess we will have to wait and see how it all pans out when the Legacy system gets into the opperators hands.
is this one of them ford vs chevy things?
Yep…big time!
Jim H
32 Speed steps?
DCS, I love it, it has 120 steps, 0 to 120 scale miles per hour. The menu will allow you to limit the top speed, rate of Accel and Decel for each locomotive and then store it in memory. The “end shaft encoder” on the motor shaft of your locomotive counts 24 times per motor rev. Software then converts it to true speed based on driver size and gear ratio. The “Lashup” command sends the same commands to all locomotives you list for “double heading”.
Yes, MTH has announced an upgrade to PS-2 due this fall. Version 3.1 is now about a year old. Looks like a lot on Lionel functions were added. Maybe the two are talking to each other for the good of the hobby?
PS-2 upgrades, being software based, can be uploaded off the Internet to your existing PS-2 TIU and Remote. No new hardware to buy. A new version of the “PS-2 Loader” is on-line.
I was going to ask Mike, if a new DCS was in the works, but I relized he probably wouldn’t say anything for product devolopment reasond.
are there any other differences besides the speed steps and vibration feature? the system looks good and hopefully works just as well. but i guess we’ll have to wait until it comes out.
Lionel said it is coming out in october. Its not that expensive, only like $250 for the controller and charger.
Grayson