I had the exact same problem with my 10" LX200 when I first got it.
Everything would be fine. Even the N/S keys on the keypad would be
working. Then, all of a sudden, they would stop working, and I could
no longer move the scope in the N/S direction. I also noticed that
the declination motor was no longer working. There was no N/S directional
movement at all. I suspected the keypad, cables, connectors, power, etc...
I then discovered that a light tap or two on the cover of the declination
motor started it going again. I took the cover off to watch the
declination motor at work to see if I could see any reason for it
seizing. I couldn't. I ended up getting a Meade repair kit and
replacing the declination motor, and all has been well ever since then.

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 4 May 1999 18:18:31 +1000
Subject: [M]: Re: LX200 Dec Stops Responding

Greetings all,

Last night I had my 10" f10 LX200 out for only the fourth time since it
arrived over two months ago (Tropical weather during "the wet" is not kind
to star gazers).

Everything was working fine, just poking around looking. Then I decided to
try the electronics and goto. I aligned on two stars and even got it right,
with everything from then on coming into the fov of the 26mm super Plossl.

Then, the dec drive stopped responding to north or south keys.

Everything was free, nothing close to contacting, east-west keys were
working fine, but ns keys both continued to have no response.

The dec drive worked fine in goto, although at times it sounded like it was
coming under irregular load - a brmmmm....brmmmmm.....brmmmmm sort of noise.
Balance was fine. Nothing was hindering the scope in any way I could find,
nor was the tube close to the forks or vertical.

Then the NS keys both started working again.

The same thing happened again later in the night. No response to ns keys,
but ok on goto, then later coming good.

My first thoughts are:

The dec drive obviously responds if it gets the right signal, because the
goto works every time. So must it be the keypad, in particular the
keys/connections for the ns keys?

Is there any reason why the ns keys should both fail and come good together?

Or is it some setting or position I am not aware of that prevents the dec
drive from working in what seems to me to be a safe position? If this is the
case, there is a warning on the keypad display and I haven't seen any error
messages at all.

The battery charge seems fairly constant and shows no signs of fluctuating
in time to the brmmm...brmmm...noise.

I have looked around the recent threads (or is it, the on-going thread?)
about dec drive problems, gone to the archives etc, and while I can find
plenty of dec drive problems I haven't seen the same as mine.

Hopefully this is "common-cockup-by-new-lx200-owner-number-2,342" and my
problems can be solved with a little information.

Cheers,

colin james

View index by [date] [author] [subject]
Previous message: Re: [M]: Which SCSI card for Compaq laptop & 416XT ccd, Tom Miller
Next message: [M]: dec bearing, Email address hidden
Next message in thread: [M]: Re: RE: Re: LX200 Dec Stops Responding, Colin James
Previous message in thread: [M]: RE: Re: LX200 Dec Stops Responding, Heath, Andrew