[g__day (Matthew)]

Either that or you buy some length of 4 pin cable (its like 30 cents a metre) and at one end you attach (by crimping) a 4 pin connector (DB9 head that will go into your hand controller - they cost about 15 cents each) and to the other you attach a 8 pin connector - basically looks like the end of a standard blue lan cable - they cost about 18 cents each) run the four wires to the centre of the 8 pin plug as per the manual.

You also need a crimping tool - they look like pliers buy you can seat any of the clear plastic 4, 6, 8 or 10 pin connectors into thier specific heads into the crimper and when you close them hard they push the wire onto the connectors leads. At around $49 crimping tools aren't cheap - borrow a friends if you can). A $10 multimeter is recommended to check your wiring is fine and lastly you need a 8 pin to serial port convertor (they are about $6 at Jaycar) you just have to know which 3 of the four coloured wires you need to plug into the serial convertors holes (pins 2, 3 and 5 from memory) and you push those colour coded wires into the appropriate holes).

Reading the online instructions and testing it with a multimeter it took me an hour and $70 to make my first 15 metre cable and serial convertor and $10 and 5 minutes to make my second and third and a minute to make the second serial convertor. Its a skill and equipment worth having.

I've done it for a Celestron CG5 mount and I'd expect its the exact same set up for the Nexstar 11 hand controller. The 4 pin connector goes into the bottom of your hand controller, the 8 pin goes into your serial convertor straight into your serial port.

As well as flashing your hand controller you can use Nexstar software to run your mount from a PC.