Talk:Digital Command Control

Open standard

Is Digital Command Control really an open standard as claimed on Trainmaster Command Control and Hornby Railways? Quoting MTH Electric Trains:

MTH has also traded lawsuits with Quantum Sound Industries, whose technology is used to add electronic sound to model locomotives from various manufacturers. MTH's critics also say the company patented some elements of DCC, which was supposed to be an unencumbered open standard.

— Tobias Bergemann 06:48, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

• Well, unless MTH starts demanding license fees from other DCC manufacturers, I'd say it's pretty free. --Agamemnon2 13:40, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Does anybody know when DCC was invented? --Pauldude90 08:08, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

> DCC was invented by Hornby, who piloted their Zero-1 system during the 50's. However, it didn't sell well, but had a wide range; this primarily consisted of lococ modules (today's equivelent of a chip), the base unit (to control up to 16 loco's, the main controller) and hand-held controllers (to give wider controllability and more operating opertunities). However, due to the prematurity of the system, several faults were foiund. Primarily, this was the track not being cleaned to a high standard. Other problems included power failiure (not enough power to the track or drop due to distance from track input) and mis-interpretation of signals (i.e. input to one loco and another moves also under the same control even when seperatly programmed). Hope this helps. MGD11 —Preceding unsigned comment added by MGD11 (talk • contribs) 10:04, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

>Hornby Zero 1 was released in the mid 70s, not 50s. It was never called DCC, as far as I know. I think that most people (by convention) reserve the DCC acronym for NMRA DCC and use "digital control" as a more generic term for all the different systems available, including NMRA DCC, Zero 1, Selectrix, Maerklin/Motorola etc. NMRA DCC is an open standard with a governing body and they do issue conformance warrants. See the NMRA DCC website for more details JohnERussell (talk) 11:12, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Article rename

I wonder if this article should be renamed to NMRA DCC? Digital command control is basically a generic term which happens to be part of the name of NMRA DCC system as well. Currently the article discusses NMRA DCC, not dcc systems in general. I think it would be justified to create a new system neutral article about digital command control technology with references to real world dcc applications such as NMRA-DCC, Selectrix, Märklin-Motorola, Fleischmann FMZ etc.
—Z220info (talk) 07:10, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Do the other makers refer to their systems as a "DCC"? It's my impression that DCC implies the NMRA standard digital controllers. Who first used the name DCC? Sorry, I don't know the answers to these questions. KarlWK (talk) 19:58, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Prior to what is now called DCC, analog Command Control systems were in use (but not very common.) The digital in Digital Command Control is probably there to differentiate it from the previous analog Command Control systems.

All the old analog systems had two thing in common: no one system was the clear leader, and none were compatible with each other. By 1983 the best seller was Zero 1, and it wasn't analog. (According to Model Railroader's 1983 reader survey.) Ninety percent of the responses indicated that they didn't have a command control system of any kind. 99.254.14.247 (talk) 00:44, 28 October 2008 (UTC)