That was close!
Recently I decided to push against the inertia and clean out the obs after a 4+ year break (where does the time go?). I was rather worried about how the gear would fire up (or not) when powered, given it was all basically where I left it in 2014. The actual astro gear was pretty well covered, and collected far less dust than I expected.
The PC fired up nicely (first plus).
I then threw caution to the wind, and just flipped the switch on the rest.
The Lodestar guide cam seemed to come up, as did the focuser, the filter wheel started making seizure-like noises and of course the main CCD (Atik 428EX) was silent - no signs of life at all apart from its fan when 12V applied. I had no time to further test as I had to go to work, so went to bed last night a little deflated, wondering if I had toasted (by neglect) my $2500 CCD.
This morning I decided to just dismantle everything and test one item at a time, funny enough, when connected directly to the PC and not through the (dusty) hub, everything worked nicely. The sound of the PC recognising the Atik on connection nearly bought a tear to my eye!
Hearing the G-11 slew around at phantom stars in the blue sky felt good too....
So $59 for a new hub and we should be back in business.... I'm putting off collimating that damn fast newt still though!
Still feels good to be back though.....
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