[ChrisM]

Just before I travelled to a large astro-education event (where I was one of half a dozen demonstrators) I somewhat absent mindedly thought that I'd better check the battery in the hand controller of my Meade LX90.

I removed the 4 screws to take off the back cover and found that there was no battery in the hand controller, which is an Autostar 497.

I put the back cover back on and travelled 1.5 hours to the astro-ed session and then found that my scope didn't work anymore. Darn!!! I had to manually track objects by loosening the clutches every couple of minutes...

Symptoms: Switch on and there is the customary 'beep'.
The keypad and the display on the hand controller are fully lit up. This is abnormal. There is no information displayed, or if it is, it's not visible because the display is fully lit up, so masking any alphanumeric characters.

There is nothing obviously out of place or wrong with the circuit board, so now I don't know which way to proceed.

Any help would be most appreciated please.

Thanks, Chris