john,
I finally (thanks to you) were able to get the dCS gear work with the RC5 commands the factory sent. the number on the top i.e the "catagory" is indeed the System number but it has to be converted to HEX. so once I did that all went fine from there on.

so this is to confirm that my unit will work once the correct RC5 code is entered. now why it doesn't work with the preamp is still unknown.