Custom DCC programming

[Anonymous]

I have loads of old computers and would like to know what it would take to create my own DCC program and what else I would need to make a home-made DCC system work (boosters and such).

[Anonymous]

Note: I'm on a very tight budget for this as well.

[nfmisso]

Sim City;

The biggest cost is the power booster. But you can build your own, you may be able to find some of the components in PC power supplies and/or hard drive PCBAs.

See also: http://www.wiringfordcc.com/diy.htm

[cacole]

Dr. Terry Chamberlain, a digital electronics engineer in England, designed and constructed a DCC system for the Cochise & Western Model Railroad Club in Sierra Vista, Arizona and a couple of users in California that uses an Atari 800XL or 130XE computer as the CPU. He designed and built all of the hardware and wrote the necessary programs in Assembler. He is not going to market the product, but just did it to see if it could be done. It turned out to be a 3-4 year project, but it is 100 percent NMRA compliant and has performed extremely well on a 20 x 40 foot HO-scale layout with up to 8 simultaneous operators. The hand-held controllers he designed are so simple to operate that we let children run the trains during open houses after giving them a quick tutorial on controller functions. The actual cost and time involved in designing, constructing, programming, and testing the system must have been considerable on his part, and I know that he did not charge us anywhere near the actual costs.