Like he said, channels one and two are used with the rest set to zero. For anything below 255, you set the dimming level of channel 1 to the start address value and set channel two to zero. For anything above 255, you would set channel 1 to max (255) and set channel 2 to a value that when added to 255 will give the desired start address. For example, if you needed the start address to be 17, you would set channel one to a dimming value of 17 and channel two would be 0. If you needed the start address to be 275, then you would set channel one to 255 (max) and channel two to 20 since 255 + 20 = 275. As for telling what mode you are in, perhaps you could just make the display blink when in programming mode. As for setting the controller into programming mode, remember, that is done with the jumpers on the device, not the programmer andthat some of the newer devices do program a different way.