Help! Meade Autostar 494 freezes showing word "Time" on powerup.

[glyderman]

I hope someone can suggest a solution to this problem.

I bought an old ds2000 mount and autostar 494 recently. I have used it about 10 times with no problems. I had callibrated it and intialised it and trained the drives. Last night during a 2 star allignment the mount just kept turning round and not stopping. I saw an error mesage "Proc Trap 2". I had to turn off the controller to stop the mount moving as nothing was responding on the handbox. I then turned it back on and the usual copyright screen came up then initialising and then the word "Time" with a small vertical line right at end of the display. At this point none of the keys work on the handset except the motor slew arrows.

After restarting several times it always froze on the "Time" screen. I turned off the power, I use an external battery, removed the internal clock battery and left it for 15 minutes. Put battery back in and same problem on powerup. same thing.  I removed the internal clock battery and started power to unit. This time it went through the copyright then initiallisation and went to "Date". It responded to the  enter key and showed incorrect date. I corrected it then pressed enter and it went to "Time". I pressed enter and corrected the time with the arrow keys. Then pressed enter to accept and  nothing happened again.  I tried all keys nothing would work only the motor slew keys.  I replaced the internal clock battery.  Now turning off the power and rebooting it just starts with "Time" again and is frozen as before with no keys working only slew keys.

Suggestions to solve this  please.

I am afraid that there may be corruption to the program perhaps. Also would the error be on the mount's circuit board or in the handbox circuit board?  I do not want to buy another handbox if the error is caused by the circuit board in the mount base.

Regards

glyderman

 

[glyderman]

I have now checked the continuity on the handbox lead from end to end and all is ok. Dismantled the mount base and checked continuity throught he hbx port still ok. Every thing else looks ok inside, no loose leads or connections. So my next thing is to buy another handbox and I will use the oppotunity to upgrade to a #497. Bit of a risk as I do not know if the fault is in the handset or the motor circuit board.

[Laurieast]

There is a 497 on Ebay Meade ETX AUTOSTAR #497 HANDBOX CONTROLLER suit ETX 90,105,125. DISPLAY ISSUES
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/185575850170?hash=item2b352ec0ba:g:-TcAAOSwvZ1jHfTc

 

 

[glyderman]

Thanks for the lnk Laurence. I went for another #497 on there the other day and just received it yesterday. Replaced the faulty LCD screen with mine from #494. The whole HBX was actualy dead, but after some troubeshooting found a faulty power conenction on the HBX part on the handbox. So quick tweak of the conenctors and it all lit up. Now have upgraded it to latest Starpatch. Everything seems to work except it doesn't have an OTA that is close to mine on the data base. The #494 did. I am using a skywatch 100P on it.  My other scope, a skywatcher 130PDS is to heavy for it. I will be using the autostar  as a grab and go scope. Now I have to find out how to add more meade telescopes onto the #497 data base so that one will be close to mine. Also have to find a supplier of a drop in  screen to put in my #494 so that I can attempt to get it working again and unfrozen.