Hi Don,

Good hearing from you again.

I suspect you had a rare Keypad connection problem - this one time.
Since the DC power was up and indicated stable, as was (eventually) laptop
communications to the mount, somehow the keypad was frozen, and may also
have caused Windows to crash. It sure is a strange combination of events,
especially since it did not repeat after tear down and set up again.

Maybe you forgot to actually "lock down" the twist lock on the keypad
cable, and the intermittent message signals were getting misinterpreted.
Strange that it would blue screen crash the laptop. Next time, check all
your cables, and possibly try a DC battery power pack, in case there is
flakey DC coming from the this Pyramid. This is dedicated to just the mount,
right?

Joe

----- Original Message -----
From: "jockey_ca" <jockey_ca@...>
To: <ap-gto@...>
Sent: Saturday, November 14, 2009 12:02 AM
Subject: [ap-gto] Scary problem with AP-900 Goto & Laptop

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!



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