Stub Mandrel

OK, I'm downloading the ISO, I'm assuming Windows will know how to transfer it to a DVD. I have no desire to mess about with live DVDs or virtual boxes. How do I use it to set up a laptop as a vanilla HDD install?

New-fangled 12V 15A connectors, apparently much loved by radio hams!

Gorgeous!

Phew! I was going to say your mirror needed recoating!

We need a show us your 130_DS thread, or at least more pics here! I will take one next time I set up - hopefully tomorrow!

Trouble is, anyone good enough at it to write the manual just wants to write more features/modules etc.

Well more than have the faintest clue what linux gibberish means... I have a computer to try it on, but although I know what 'download an ISO' means (massively ambiguous as ISO is just a standards institution) but then ANY and EVERY source of advice dissolves into names of Linux distributions, utilities, drivers, commands etc. etc. and of course no-one ever bothers to explain what purpose and scope of any bit of software is. Getting everything to work on a PC with Ascom is hard enough because of the poor way that ascom's function is explained and the awful guidance for installing EQmod etc. Compared to that, Linux scares the pants off me and I'm far from a computer numpty.

Hardly! I still have nightmares about CPM, all the complexity of managing a 1980s mainframe on your desktop...

Surely you are in luck? You can track objects form due east, through the zenith and down to west with minimal rotation. You could also try mounting the mount on a wedge - in your case a near-vertical surface or even a 90-degree bracket - so it is effectively polar aligned and rotation will be minimal.

Even Gerry Anderson's Sun probe faced problems...

I knew it wasn't going to happen today when the LA operative said 'This is our 122nd unsuccessful launch..." Quack Quack Oops.

A couple of days, I had to spray the tube before final assembly. ? I bought a £15 lens from Astromedia with another finder/guider in mind (I've made three already, two 50mm, one 60mm), this was a fully coated 70 x 280mm Achro. With a 10mm ep for just x28 I could make out Jupiter's bands and Saturn's rings. The crayford is remarkably smooth, its bearings and the spindle run on aluminium extrusions. It won't win any awards but great fun and I'm 100% sure its better than anything you could find for about £25 and a raid on the bits box ? It will keep me happy until the 66ED project is finished!

My new frac . ?

I never had a shortage of power using my old Duette 12V controller, back in the 70s with Dublo 3-rail. Those was the days...

It was big in the 1990s....

I bough Paint Shop Pro last year. Much nicer than Photoshop to use but doesn't have the 'astro actions'. I have Corel Suite 10 with Photopaint which is what I use for all my quick and dirty processing, it has a few things that work really well on ordinary images

Thanks folks, I'll start tomorrow...

OK then Linux bods... I have an old windows laptop here (used to run Vista). Nothing of value on it. What do I have to do to it so I can load it with Linux and appropriate software to control my mount (including guiding) and (ZWO and Eos) cameras? Or is it anon-starter as I have a ZWO ASI120MC?

This week I got a pair of those nice rings (75mm) off eBay for £13 including postage ?

That was my thought as well, or out of balance in DEC. Also, I found that perfect mesh with an unloaded mount became binding with the weight of a scope on eth mount.

clear;y defective goods - the middle is missing!

Poor you ?

Yikes, I hope you haven't 'accidentally' spent it on astro gear ?

Well done @Peco4321, it's a target I've tried a couple of times but unlike planets any DS at that elevation here comes out lost in yellow soup ?