J Nordby wrote:
>
>
> > I suppose one could build a hand controller <g>, but then why would
> one do
> > that?
>
> Several reasons to want to bypass the hand controller:
> 1) There would be one less land-line connection to go haywire
> 2) Having the keypad in series with my computer RS232 connection
> somehow offends my sense of efficiency -
> 3a) Provide an alternative to electronic keypad, which could
> malfunction onsite
> 3b) On my LX200, I can remove the keypad once the telescope is set up,
> and observe all night using my computer program -
> 4) I'll try and think of more reasons. :)

You would still probably need some sort of box between your computer and
the scope. The basic hand controller has 8 wires to the scope, I don't
know how many are used by the Astrostar. I doubt that any of the lines
are RS-232. Also, the hand controller is where all the Alt-Azimuth to
RA-Dec conversions take place. There is a lot of stuff that the scope
CPU does that is not readily apparent to the end user. Driving the
stepper motors is not something that I would want my non-real-time
Win95 PC to do.

Just my .02,
Dan

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