Special Options, usually abbreviated as 'SO', are configuration
parameters of the Intellibox which influence its operational behaviour.
It is the policy of Uhlenbrock not to describe every Special Option.
Also the official documentation not always mentions interrelationships
between Special Options.
This unofficial list tries to
compensate for this omission, but may not be completely correct and will
probably never be complete.
The information, in addition to what can be found in the official documents,
is derived from conversations in the IBX and other mailing lists, query and
answers of the Uhlenbrock support site and by experimenting with the
Intellibox.
Note: When referring to menu items this document uses the English
terminology.
If in doubt switch the language of your Intellibox to English!
The Intellibox uses two sets of Special Options: a static and a dynamic set. Upon power-on and after a reset (with a '@' or '@@' command, or manually by pushing simultaneously the 'go'- and 'stop'-buttons on the panel) the Intellibox copies the values of Special Options from electronically changeable static memory to dynamic working memory.
A static SO-value can only be changed from the panel of the
Intellibox.
This can be done explicitly via the Special Options menu by selecting a
Special Option number and changing its value.
A value is only accepted when it is within the allowed range for this SO.
The value of an SO can also change implicitly as result of a change of
another menu item.
For example when you change in the menu 'Access.Setting' the values of
'Switch times', the static values of Special Options 13 and 14 will be
changed accordingly.
When a Special Option is read via the menus or with a computer program always the static value is returned, not the actual dynamic value! Some dynamic values may be obtained by P50X commands, such as X88PGet.
The dynamic value of an SO changes automatically when its static value is
changed from the panel of the Intellibox.
Some commands may cause a change of the operational value of a Special
Option in dynamic working memory.
The command descriptions in the protocol documentation will mostly mention
which SOs are involved.
Examples of dynamic changes are:
Sending a 'long RS-232 break' signal from the computer to the Interface (see P5XIntro.txt) will among others have the following effects with respect to the operational characteristics of the IB and the dynamic copy of some Special Options:
Notes:
Below examples of combinations of Special Option settings for some commonly used environments:
Loc Special Options (LSO's) can be set at the panel of the Intellibox within the Loc menu, after the decoder protocol selection. There are 10 LSO's per loc, numbered 0..9, each can have a value of 0 or 1.
Summary of default values of LSO's
LSO# 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Mot Old 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
Mot New 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 1
DCC 14 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
DCC 27 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
DCC 28 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1
DCC 28 DAC 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1
DCC 128 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 1
DCC 128 DAC 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 1
Selectrix 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
Contribution by Nils E. Brönner (incl. the meaning of SO#80..95)
An address of 1..9999 can be assigned to each of to up to 8 Lokmaus 1 devices through the 'LokMaus-Address' menu option. This address information is stored in SO#80..95, 2 SO's per loc. Each address is split into 2 parts: a 'segment' and an 'offset' value. The segment value is the quotient (truncated to a whole number), the offset value is the remainder of the division: address / 128.
Example: Lokmaus 1, loc 1 has address 299.
The segment value of the address will be 2, the offset value 43
(2 * 128 + 45 = 299).
The offset value is stored in the first SO of a pair, the segment value
in the second SO of the pair.
For this example SO#82 will therefore become 43 and SO#83 will become 2.
The information in this table is collected from different sources, both formal and informal, such as: