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Gee Wiss
You have covered most of the stuff that I covered in mine, I swaped out motors and had issues with 497 controllers x 2 that came with the scope..
I cleaned pins etc the same, cleaned boards and tested setting circles and affiliated parts.
My motors would eventually work and when aligning come up with motor faults, with or with scope and counter weights.
What I found is I borrowed another 497 controller of known working unit, and also gave mine to someone to test. They had issues but slightly different issues to me, I will put that down to different people testing different ways. I used their unit and setup to match my scope as there controller was from an etx, and mine lxd55.
The control performed and motors performed all ok. I used the controller for a few nights and only found a couple of time that the DEC motor failed. At this point I found the setting circle on the Dec was bent so corrected and all work fine after that.
This is back in 2005 and in 2007 I purchased the hypertune kit and did a full rebuild, cleaned everything, even pulled the motors apart and cleaned. Found some dust and that in them. Anyway all back to together and never missed a beat.
I am no electronics expert, but dabble, I have a mate who is electronics engineer, who I gave the controllers to.
The controllers both had moisture in them from being in cold and hot environments and the parts under the keypads had broken down.
This may not be your case nor may it be the issue, but I would see if I could get another controller and test or at least give yours to someone else. Etx scope will take them and so will some of the other scopes, not autostar II scopes as far as I know. At least you can rule the controller completely out, it had me stumped for a long time and I tell you it really gave me the you know what. I purchased a new one, my mate fix the others, which I gave to another astronomer years ago.
just to confirm when you tested with the 497 did you change all the ratios for RA and DEC etc. Did you try train drive, as well.
If I was up that way I would give you a hand.
Andrew
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