I just went out to observe the occultation of Venus by the Moon and
discovered that the mount on my CPC1100 has died again. It was working
fine when I last used it on July 18. I put into Hibernate mode at the end of that session.
Today when I turned it on, I got this message on the hand controller:
NO RESPONSE
16
I pressed UNDO, and started a Solar System Align on the Sun. The GPS
was working OK. I got the warning about the Sun, pressed Enter to rid
of it, and then pressed the direction pad. This got me nothing except a
message:
NO RESPONSE
17
I repeated this with the controller from my NexStar 6, with exactly the
same results, so the problem is in the mount. Not the same as last
time, because I never saw any error messages before.
We've had a couple of thunderstorms, but no close strikes, and the scope
is now on a surge protected power bar.
I've found this file, which has some helpful information:
http://www.nexstarsite.com/OddsNEnds/NoResponse.htm
I dread having to update the firmware. The last time I did this, it
wiped out all 99 of my User Objects, my entire library of variable
stars. I had to re-enter them manually, something I would rather not do
again, if I can help it.
Sigh!
Earlier today I set up the Celestron CGEM mount on the concrete pad on the east side of the house: maybe this put a curse on the CPC!
Hi Geoff,
ReplyDeleteHave you tried plugging the hand controller into one of the two AUX ports on the base? When I got a 16 error while I was plugged into the arm port, I switched off and tried the AUX ports and have not had any problems down there... but I guess it's just a matter of time!
Thanks for the tip. I felt so discouraged after the CPC failed so soon after I had just gotten it running again that I haven't tried troubleshooting it yet. I'll give this a try.
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