5100B Bridge - is it obsolete ?

Hi All

Have had a potential customer ring me up requesting installation and programming of 14 switch locations.

Only component he can see is a 5100B - this looks like an old product to me ??

I believe its still CBus2, and assume so is everything else in the building. Question is - can i add new products such as Neo's - and will it be programmable with Toolkit etc. and a new PCI interface ??

 

C-Bus compatibility

All C-Bus products, since it's release in 1994, are C-Bus compatible with each other. We put a H U G E amount of effort into making sure that you can do things like walk up to a 1994 installation, bolt in a Colour C-Touch, and everything will work fine. So, from a C-Bus hardware perspective, the old and new units will work very happily together.

The only thing to watch out for would be a really old PC interface. From memory, Toolkit needs a PCI with version 2.00 firmware or newer to work properly. Given that these were released in the mid 90's you should should be OK.

I think Toolkit may have some issues with really old Network Bridges, but I'm not 100% sure. Given that we made the 5100B right up until only recently (and you can probably still get one if desparate) then the age of the bridge could be just about anything. The firmware in them was progressively upgraded so if it's not too old then you should be OK. Might pay to have a 5500NB on hand just in case Toolkit gives troubles when you go to site.

If you're only adding Neo's then you can still use V2 to program them. V2 should work with all those old C-Bus products. You won't be able to program some of the newer stuff like DLT's however.