Last night I hauled my mount (May 2008 model) and scope out and set it up in the back yard. After everything was set up in the normal way, I turned on the power(Pyramid 5A power supply). On power up the LED on the CP3 servo controller turned on red as usual however the keypad did not come on. I turned off the power checked all the connections and cables (keypad, motor cables power supply etc) then fired it up again. Again keypad was still dead. I then connected my laptop via two keyspan USB to serial adapters to the mount and fired up the laptop (Windows XP pro. The laptop came on with the blue screen of death saying windows was shut down to protect files on the computer. The were three references to memory addresses in the last row. I shut everything down hauled everything inside and set it back up in the basement. After about an hour, I fired everything back up and the mount and keypad appeared to work fine. I fired up the lap top. Windows came back up with a message that the system had recovered from a major problem (not exact wording). I connected to the mount and brought up the Sky 6 and Pulse guide. Everything connected and runs ok. I have tried several shut downs and restarts with no further problems. My laptop (4+ yr old Dell Inspiron 8600) has always been stable.
Has anyone else experienced something like this.
Don Anderson
Clear skies!