Today I took a Premiere Dash 8 over to the clubhouse to see if it would run on my older DCS system bought new from Jim Sutter in '09 or '10 and upgraded once at York about 5 years ago. Definitely not 'cutting edge'. We have not tried DCS as yet and it was with some doubt that I would have a good first experience with it. Our layout is fairly large - 25' x 40' and was not wired with any consideration given to DCS operation. "We'll work that out when the time comes" was the general attitude.
I've never operated in the passive mode and didn't really know how to hook it up but thought I'd give it a try today just for the heck of it. I added some lightweight alligator clips to one of the harnesses with banana clips and clipped them to a siding. Powered up and the Dash 8 responded to 'Start-Up' and proceeded to operate fine. I ran it around half of the layout on the outer loop and it seemed rock solid.
This is very encouraging in that my TIU is a pre-Rev L model and our track is mostly buss wired. Here she is running smoothly...
