The manual say's there will be two numbers on the display. As far as I know this is incorrect as I have always had one number. This is in Barry's DCS book. You should be fine.
Howard is correct, true manual; is mistaken. I had this conversation wit MTH when I first got a DCS Commander to use when writing the 2nd edition of the book.
The track signal test works the same way on the DCS Commander as it does with the TIU and remote. If you understand the way that the DCS signal test works, a single reading makes sense.
This is explained on page 55 of The DCS O Gauge Companion 2nd Edition:
DCS Signal Strength
DCS signal strength is a number, from 1-10, that's calculated based on the number of data packets that the TIU sends and receives back from a PS2 engine that's performing a DCS signal strength test.
During the test, the TIU sends a continuous series of data packets to the PS2 engine. The PS2 engine is expected to reply to every packet that it receives, however, some packets are either not received by the engine or the response is not received by the TIU. Regardless, the TIU calculates DCS signal strength by counting how many response packets the TIU receives from the PS2 engine out of each hundred data packets the TIU sent, and then looks at a sliding scale to determine the signal strength that should be reported. The scale is not linear, rather, it is such that 87-100 packets equates to a DCS signal strength of “10”, 80-86 equates to a “9”, and so on.
This and a whole lot more is all in "The DCS O Gauge Companion 2nd Edition", now available for purchase as an eBook or a printed book from MTH's web store site! Click on the link below to go to MTH's web page for the book!
