Any ideas on repairing a (slightly!) blown motor board ?

[ben_mtl]

Hello Malcolm ! And thank you very much for your quick reply.

You made me re-check the old and new AZ boards and I did find a difference ! The chips and routes look identical but the original one has two pins shorted (labeled as JP2) as shown below.

I wish I had the original ALT board to compare to, but I don't. The new ALT board doesn't have any short in these JP pins. Any idea what these pins are used for ?

There's a photo of someone else's ALT board at the first page of this topic and there's no short so it's not obvious that there's a solution to my problem here.

[malc-c]

To be honest I'm not entirely sure.  I know the EQ3/ EQ5 boards had jumpers to configure which mount the board was used for, so would assume its something similar.  The schematic has three pins of the PIC pulled high by resistors, and the jumper would be used to pull those pins to GND.  But as to what combination does what I'm not sure.  Hopefully some of the others who have been involved in reverse engineering these things can chime in.

You could try jumpering the J2 pair by using a piece of wire soldered to the underside thus keeping the pins clean.

[ben_mtl]

I didn't want to take an unnecessary risk so I asked the Skywatcher support about this connector, it took them one week to confirm that the center pins should be connected, so my problem is finally solved !

Thanks again Malcolm for your help, which was much valuable than Skywatcher's.

[malc-c]

That's great news... I had a hunch that the three pairs of pins were used to configure which mount the board is used with, but nice to have it confirmed.