Linux + Stellarium + SynScan = HELP!

[pwalsh61]

I should know by now that nothing's ever quite as easy as it seems!

Last night in the garage I thought I'd have a go at hooking up my Dell laptop running Ubuntu 10.10 to my EQ5 Pro using the serial cable that came with the mount and the handset in PC Direct mode.

Having seen the problems others have had with USB-serial converters I though I was on to a winner having a proper DB9 serial port on the Dell.

So, I connected it all up, powered on the SynScan...setup..etc then selected PC Direct mode

In Stellarium I configured Telescope Control (see attached screenshot), selected the telescope and clicked Start.

The Telescopes tab showed

1 Connected local,Stellarium New telescope 1

So I thought "Good, it's connected to the SynScan"

I then selected Vega, hit Space to centre it on screen and then pressed CTRL+1

Nothing, not even a twitch from the mount.

Tried CTRL-0 and manually entering co-ords to slew to. Nothing.

I've now noticed that Stellarium will say "Connected" even when nothing's plugged in to the serial port!

Am I missing something here?

Why do it? Curiosity mainly. Most of the time I'll only be using the hand controller but I just thought it'd be fun to try.

Has anyone managed to get Linux + Stellarium + serial port (not USB-serial converter) + SynScan to work? If so, how?