[Outcast (Carlton)]

Tonight my Meade Autostar display started playing up...

To be fair, it's about 15 years old... Since I got the scope secondhand I have found that the buttons needed to be pressed very hard to get them to work.

Over the time I've owned it (18 months or so) I have cleaned the contacts & routinely use a 2b pencil on the rubberised keyboard to improve contact.. this works for a while...

I recently loaded some 'tours' that came with the scope on a BINTEL CD...

The handset still operates but, tonight the display started showing what can best be described as gobbledygook... I setup & aligned my LX90 no problem & then sat admiring Eta Carina for a while.. I then went to slew to M47 & when I pressed the 'Mode' button, the display went all weird... odd characters, totally unuseable for goto but, could still slew using up/down, left/right arrow keys.

Thought it might be my battery powersupply so, changed that out for 240v mains supply; put the scope back to home position, restarted.. handset display was fine, started to align.. gobbledygook again... Turned off scope, took handset inside, opened & cleaned everything... did not check the ribbon connector to display though...

Restarted, everything looked fine.. two star align.. slewed to Jupiter & commenced viewing the transit of Europa... went to slew to Saturn... display turned to gobbledygook again... slewed to Saturn using arrow keys.. was going to do a factory reset... then thought.. hmmmm, can't do that coz I can't understand a word on the display... turned off, turned on.. got the beep but, now the display is blank.. nothing.. nada...

Too late tonight but, will check the ribbon cable seating tomorrow evening & will use Andrews magic little program to see if I can connect through my computer...

Factory reset? Reload firmware (it's running latest version pre GPS update, which I don't need) from Starpatch... or....

Is the handset done & dusted.... if so, does anyone have a spare they wish to part with, either #497 or even an Audiostar... otherwise.. where do I buy a new Audiostar from in Australia.. can't seem to find them online other than in the states...

Thanks in advance for any advice or assistance...

Cheers